A great deal has been going on in the U.S. government, and by the U.S. government, that is cause for significant concern. From the massive civilian spying to the torture camps ran in other countries, we U.S. citizens are experiencing a de-evolution on a national scale.

One of the most unfortunate - indeed, saddest - microcosmic phenomenons occuring within this de-evolution is that a great deal of U.S. citizens are blind to these things. Or if they are not blind to them, then they seem to think that it is some how OK for these things to be occuring. With freedoms and rights playing such a huge role in our daily lives, one would think (and hope) that such a thing “would never happen”. Yet it is.

A recent, small scale example of daily rights being abused occurred in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. This is a case, that you can learn more about here, that is quickly becoming infamous on the Internet. In short, the librarian is being chastised by the mayor of the town, amongst other officials, for upholding constitutional law. They would have had her hand over records to the police without the police having gone through proper, legal channels.

This, of course, would have ultimately resulted in the accused individual getting away with the crime that they committed. With the evidence obtained illegally, they would not have been able to use the evidence in court and thus they would have had no real case against the guy.

Yet still, the mayor and so many others are calling for her to be suspended from her job and referring to her as selfish, and to what she done as such a terrible thing.

Personally, I believe that situations such as this occur in this country because so many of us are uneducated about what our rights actually are, and why we have those rights in the first place. On average, as U.S. citizens we take it for granted that “we have rights”, and we assume that those rights will be upheld by the legal system. More and more this is becoming not the case, as is shown by this one example with the librarian.

The only defense against such a thing is education. We citizens of the U.S. have largely been blisfully ignorant of our own basic rights and laws.

What I propse is a simple addition to public schools. Instead of stopping at the history of the U.S., classes should also cover the constitution. Sure, it’s a boring stuffy subject, but there is no need to go into a great ammount of detail. What we need is for more people to understand their basic rights. That alone would help a great deal.

Studies in public schools should include why those rules are in the constitution, and real world examples should be given of the bad that can occur when those protections do not exist. Ideally, classroom group projects should be developed where the students physically act out two scenes that are based on one of the amendments of the constitution.

One of the two scenes would be to show the rule in action, and another one of the scenes would be to show what happens when those protections do not exist.

The test over the subject should require that the student has each of the constitutional amendments memorized, as well as be able to respond to at least three examples of why each of the rules are important.

That sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t have to take up a great deal of time. The goal of the class is NOT to make them into little lawyers, the goal of the class would be to impress on the young citizens of the country just what rights we have, and why those rights are important.

Such a course would not help us in the immediate future, but it would go a long way to help protect the future citizenship of the country from what is happening today. With more education more people would be aware that not only have their rights been violated, but just why those rights are important in the first place. More people, therefor, would (hopefully!) be more apt to get up and do something about the abuses to their rights.

When the president of the U.S. says that the constitution is just a god damn piece of paper, then you know that the situation in our country has met an all time low.

Such a curriculum, in my opinion, with such a specialized focus on our rights as U.S. citizens should be mandatory in all public high schools starting now. Then again, I always have been a bit of a dreamer.

~Stephen