Saturday, December 04, 2004

Should we require schools to teach about the Constitution?

Senator Robert Byrd promoting his lifelong passion for the U.S. Constitution, has inserted into a massive federal spending bill a requirement that schools devote at least part of a day each year to teaching about the document.

The provision would apply to all schools, elementary through college, that receive federal aid. Of course, education groups worry that the provision could be the opening wedge in a campaign by Washington to influence what schools teach.

While I agree the Constitution needs to be taught more, because as Byrd said, even his Senate colleagues don't know what it says sometimes, I don't like the precedent since we could hypothetically find teaching "intelligent design" mandated in our science classes. I generally think there should only be federal involvement in schools as far as funding, increasing teacher's pay and class sizes, etc. Things that help better schools and not deciding what the cirriculum should be.

On another note, I also don't like that this kind of stuff makes it into spending bills. We need a law or constitutional amendment that would make it so that everything in a bill has to be germane to the topic of the bill and not completely unrelated. It's crazy we have this kind of stuff making it into spending bills all the time. It's shady and wrong.

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