Recent reports on discrimination in private schools have led some observers to decry the fact that private and charter schools receiving public tax dollars selectively exclude some populations from both employment and enrollment; others, however, note that in these and similar instances the schools have broken no laws. Both may be right. How can…

This article explores the discourse on Black Founding Fathers through Glenn Beck's television show, "Founders' Fridays". According to Beck, this 2010 summer television special was an opportunity to present Black American history in a more nuanced and truthful way. The theoretical framework, silencing the past, is used to…

This article examines the historical relationship between political power and the pursuit of education and social equality from the Reconstruction era to the present. The chief argument is that education equality is historically linked to and even predicated on equal political power, specifically, equal access to the franchise and instruments of…

In light of increasing mandates to incorporate close reading of primary source historical documents at the elementary level, this study explored the reading difficulty level of the US Constitution with preservice elementary teachers using a traditional cloze assessment procedure. While best practice pedagogy of social studies has long included…

The latest episode in the long-running struggle for control of the Constitution, and the political power that goes with it, is playing out in the federal courts in California. The contending philosophies are originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be read as it was originally understood by the framers and ratifiers, and the congeries…

This article features two documents which can serve as a starting point for a lesson on public service while students debate the amount of pay that public servants should receive. These are: (1) the printed draft of the Constitution showing George Washington's handwritten corrections that eliminated state payments and included the phrase "to be…

Last summer, California and Massachusetts became the sixth and seventh states--along with Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maryland--to send a resolution to the U.S. Congress calling for a constitutional amendment to (1) end the court's extension of personhood rights to corporations, and (2) enable the government to definitively…

Central banking in the United States has a long and controversial history dating back to the earliest days of the republic. One of the most widely presented arguments against a central bank has been that the U.S. Constitution does not expressly grant the federal government power to charter a bank. Recently, this issue has received new scrutiny in…

Early in the year, the students of history and government at Mountain View High School in Stafford, Virginia, began to devise hand motions to help memorize the 27 amendments to the Constitution for government class. Three students in the school who are interested in hip hop music then suggested composing a rap song about the topic. Working with…

Given the current national debate over immigration reform and the plethora of anti-immigrant policies, practices, and laws, school curriculums should include materials that will allow students to learn about, and reflect on, the impact this debate has on the lived realities of those most impacted. Specifically, teachers and their students will…

On July 23, 1787, delegates at the Constitutional Convention established a Committee of Detail to prepare a report and a printed draft of a Constitution "conformable to the proceedings of the convention." Two weeks later, the committee submitted a printed rough draft to the delegates for their consideration. In this first draft, the Preamble began…

In this article, the author reflects on Frederick Douglass's different interpretations of the Constitution. One explanation of the shift in Douglass's thinking on the Constitution had to do with his growing intellectual independence. Douglass had the intellectual space to reflect on the fact that there was more than one way to think about…

Frederick Douglass dramatically and publicly changed his own mind about the Constitution. Like Frederick Douglass, the author had originally viewed the Constitution as pro-slavery. Yet a close look at Douglass's writings revealed a Constitution that empowered the federal government to abolish slavery.

The Depression and the New Deal brought together a variety of conditions and social forces that set up a formative clash over the institution of professional journalism. At the heart of that fight was the rise of the American Newspaper Guild and its battle for control over the trusteeship of the freedom of the press. The experience in the news…

History has placed the stamp of approval on the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of the Vietnam War. If WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange is another Daniel Ellsberg, then it is possible the website's disclosures will be viewed over time as similarly in the public interest. A classroom discussion on the release of…