Another tale from the annals of educational malpractice.
5 thoughts on “Is Our Children Learning?”
Meh. It’s for second graders. Their level of understanding about the true role of the Supreme Court is going to be extremely limited. After all, we’re talking about 8 year olds who still think fart jokes are the height of comedy. If you have to summarize what the SC does to kids that age level in a single sentence, saying that they decide which laws are “fair” isn’t that bad.
I have a very precocious and scary smart 9 year old, just finishing up 3rd grade, and even he only has a very vague idea of the concept of ‘constitutionality’.
Bill,
I disagree with your statement about the capacity of children to grasp this concept. In fact it’s pretty easy to explain in a way they can grasp.
You tell a 2nd Grader, something like this.
The Supreme Court decides whether laws that get passed can actually be allowed under the Constitution.
The state can and does pass speed limits and that’s a legal or allowable law, but they can’t pass a law that says everyone must drive a blue Ford or a red Honda, that would be an illegal law. It’s not about the ‘fairness’ of the law, it’s about the people who make the laws, working within the rules they have to go by.
I had a 2nd grader who was scary smart too, and he wanted to know about everything. Now he has a son like that and I’ve learned to just give them the best analogy you can. There will be plenty of time to expound on the topic between 8 and 18 before taking the selective Service Oath.
Of course, there is a flip side, we had another son who was plenty smart also. But he couldn’t have cared less about how things worked. BUT it didn’t keep me from telling him anyway. And it was only years later that I found out that he had heard those analogies and grasped them. By deciding to NOT push the children, or teach above their heads a little sometimes, we do the same thing the teachers do, dumb it down.
And how’s THAT working for us as a country?
Well, then ask the typical second grader what the Constitution is. Don’t forget the curriculum has to be for *ALL* students, not just the smart ones.
I actually had a conversation with my son about the kinds of rights the Constitution secures for us yesterday on the drive over to our Cub Scout meeting. I pointed out the freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, along with the right to bear arms and that the police can’t just search wherever they want without getting a judge’s OK. I also told him he didn’t have to talk to the police if he didn’t want to: That seemed to surprise him. Apparently, he was under the impression that you had to answer the police whenever they asked you a question. It probably never occurred to him that those in a position of authority have limited powers.
Back to the subject, though, I’m not all that opposed to a curriculum for second graders that says “the Supreme Court decides which laws are fair”, because at its heart, that’s what it does, consistent with the restrictions in the Constitution. The concept of ‘constitutionality’ implies a lot that most second graders won’t grasp.
I know I’m an outlier, but I’m pretty sure at that age I was able to grasp any advanced concept anybody went to any effort to talk over with me.
Our educational system is failing because parents a few generations ago couldn’t be bothered to teach their own kids who, when it came their turn, couldn’t be bothered to monitor the performance of the people that were getting paid to teach them.
Now it’s all decided by politicians, and anyone who wants to monitor their performance gets flagged for an IRS audit.
“The state . . . can’t pass a law that says everyone must drive a blue Ford or a red Honda, that would be an illegal law.”
Sez who?
Wisconsin has a law “the backup lamps must not be illuminated unless the transmission is in the reverse gear” that pretty much outlaws GM cars with keyless entry.
Meh. It’s for second graders. Their level of understanding about the true role of the Supreme Court is going to be extremely limited. After all, we’re talking about 8 year olds who still think fart jokes are the height of comedy. If you have to summarize what the SC does to kids that age level in a single sentence, saying that they decide which laws are “fair” isn’t that bad.
I have a very precocious and scary smart 9 year old, just finishing up 3rd grade, and even he only has a very vague idea of the concept of ‘constitutionality’.
Bill,
I disagree with your statement about the capacity of children to grasp this concept. In fact it’s pretty easy to explain in a way they can grasp.
You tell a 2nd Grader, something like this.
The Supreme Court decides whether laws that get passed can actually be allowed under the Constitution.
The state can and does pass speed limits and that’s a legal or allowable law, but they can’t pass a law that says everyone must drive a blue Ford or a red Honda, that would be an illegal law. It’s not about the ‘fairness’ of the law, it’s about the people who make the laws, working within the rules they have to go by.
I had a 2nd grader who was scary smart too, and he wanted to know about everything. Now he has a son like that and I’ve learned to just give them the best analogy you can. There will be plenty of time to expound on the topic between 8 and 18 before taking the selective Service Oath.
Of course, there is a flip side, we had another son who was plenty smart also. But he couldn’t have cared less about how things worked. BUT it didn’t keep me from telling him anyway. And it was only years later that I found out that he had heard those analogies and grasped them. By deciding to NOT push the children, or teach above their heads a little sometimes, we do the same thing the teachers do, dumb it down.
And how’s THAT working for us as a country?
Well, then ask the typical second grader what the Constitution is. Don’t forget the curriculum has to be for *ALL* students, not just the smart ones.
I actually had a conversation with my son about the kinds of rights the Constitution secures for us yesterday on the drive over to our Cub Scout meeting. I pointed out the freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, along with the right to bear arms and that the police can’t just search wherever they want without getting a judge’s OK. I also told him he didn’t have to talk to the police if he didn’t want to: That seemed to surprise him. Apparently, he was under the impression that you had to answer the police whenever they asked you a question. It probably never occurred to him that those in a position of authority have limited powers.
Back to the subject, though, I’m not all that opposed to a curriculum for second graders that says “the Supreme Court decides which laws are fair”, because at its heart, that’s what it does, consistent with the restrictions in the Constitution. The concept of ‘constitutionality’ implies a lot that most second graders won’t grasp.
I know I’m an outlier, but I’m pretty sure at that age I was able to grasp any advanced concept anybody went to any effort to talk over with me.
Our educational system is failing because parents a few generations ago couldn’t be bothered to teach their own kids who, when it came their turn, couldn’t be bothered to monitor the performance of the people that were getting paid to teach them.
Now it’s all decided by politicians, and anyone who wants to monitor their performance gets flagged for an IRS audit.
“The state . . . can’t pass a law that says everyone must drive a blue Ford or a red Honda, that would be an illegal law.”
Sez who?
Wisconsin has a law “the backup lamps must not be illuminated unless the transmission is in the reverse gear” that pretty much outlaws GM cars with keyless entry.