In my Athens high school civics class back in the day we learned about our Declaration of Independence, our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights and our form of government. We studied Thomas Jefferson’s statement in the July 4,1776 Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We studied Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address he gave on November 19,, 1863. The speech begins this way: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Note that when this speech was given, the Civil War raged on. But the Gettysburg address honored those who died on both sides and were buried in Gettysburg.
You might say that Lincoln gave one of our first Veteran’s Day speeches. Lincoln concludes: “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain— and that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
My high school civics class studied the Bill of Rights which, largely due to James Madison, provided 10 amendments to the Constitution to provide specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights. Consider:
Amendment 1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment 14. Includes the clause, “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Although I did not save any tests from my high school civics class, I would propose the following questions:
Could the following events happen in America?
Question 1. The mayor of a town orders all hair salons in a town to close but has one open up just for her because she is an important official and needs to look good.
Question 2. A state governor orders churches to close.
Question 3. A governor orders Thanksgiving dinners in homes be restricted to five people and face masks must be worn by all.
Question 4. An airline announces that future pilot hiring will be based on race and sex where 50 percent of the 5,000 pilots trained in the next decade will be women or people of color.
Question 5. A college admissions office gives preference to black, Hispanic and native American students.
Answer to all five questions. Get serious, none of these events can happen in America. They would violate our Constitutional rights.
So, in this context, lets foster and stress in Georgia high schools the traditional civics lessons that I learned.
Fred Johnson of Madison retired after 40 years in the aerospace industry.
