Today is Constitution Day, which is especially worth celebrating in the midst of a contentious presidential election.
A special thanks to our partners in civic education at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., who gave me permission to post an image of the U.S. Constitution as part of this piece. It is a beautiful thing to behold, with its exquisite script flowing from the iconic “We the People” opening.
But underlying the words lie some fundamental values and commitments that are valuable to remember today. The first subtext is the essential importance of compromise. As the National Archives notes on its website, “The Constitution acted like a colossal merger, uniting a group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures [and uniting] its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the union in the people. Without it, the American Experiment might have ended as quickly as it had begun.”
Under enormous pressure, the drafters and Constitutional Convention participants navigated innumerable difficult (and woefully imperfect) compromises to establish the United States of America.
Coming together for the common good is only possible through believing in something greater than oneself and embracing the humanity of those who may have different concerns, creeds, and circumstances. Even as majorities of Americans support compromise in our national politics, too many of our national leaders who presume to represent us seem to have lost sight of this in recent years. That has made the jobs of educators, local officials, and other civic actors harder in many cases.
Thankfully, our work at iCivics provides plenty of anecdotal evidence that our fellow citizens, including the rising generations, are transcending tribalism and partisanship to solve problems together in their communities. Cases in point are the 34 new iCivics youth fellows from diverse sociopolitical and geographic contexts across the United States who will be traveling to Washington, D.C., soon to continue their civic learning and leadership journey together.
The second subtext that speaks to me when I look at the U.S. Constitution is the sense that it’s nothing more than paper without the commitment of each successive generation to teach and learn it. iCivics is proud to support more than 145,000 teachers who reach more than 9 million students a year with our civic education resources, including a new Civic Digital Literacy initiative that provides nonpartisan, evidence-based, classroom-ready resources to help prepare students to skillfully verify the various pieces of information encountered online.
We are continually in awe of the educators we work with who are bringing the Constitution and other civic lessons into the classroom, even amidst the challenges too many are facing for simply doing their jobs in an increasingly polarized climate. Now, more than ever, it is important that our educators know they have our full faith and trust in this important endeavor.
Let’s use this Constitution Day to celebrate the subtexts, reaffirming our commitment to civic compromise, civic education, and civic educators. As our iCivics founder, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said, “The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution…is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it.”
If you’re interested in more information to help with Constitutional conversations in your classroom, around your dinner table, or anywhere else, visit our new iCivics website.
