By Law, Constitution Day Becomes Part of School Calendar

The city’s 80,000 public school teachers, who have been busy stocking classrooms with books, learning students’ names, and posting colorful bulletin boards, tomorrow will receive notice about a new responsibility mandated by law, Constitution Day.Tucked away in a rider in Congress’s massive appropriations bill is a new regulation requiring all schools receiving federal funds to hold programs commemorating September 17, the date in 1787 when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the nation’s charter.The city’s Department of Education, which oversees the largest school system in the country, is scrambling to get word out to the 1,400-plus schools, and plans to include notice of the holiday in a newsletter to be distributed tomorrow to principals. Teachers will be encouraged to visit a variety of Web sites providing information about the government’s founding document. Because September 17 falls on a Saturday this year, city schools will commemorate the day on Friday.The legislation was the brainchild of the 87-year-old Democratic senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, who is known to carry around a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and pull it out on the Senate floor. He is considered to be among the Senate’s leading authorities on the document.“Our Constitution is not merely a dry piece of dead parchment, but a revered and living document that has helped inspire our nation to achieve seemingly impossible goals,” the senator told a group of federal employees during a program about the Constitution in July. Under the bill, all new federal employees, too, must be given “educational and training materials” about the Constitution.Mr. Byrd told the group that he was frustrated with Americans who seem more interested in watching “Desperate Housewives” than in reading the Constitution.Because the federal Department of Education is not allowed to mandate curriculum, it has only “issued guidance” to schools. The department does not intend to enforce compliance and has not received any additional funds to do so.“We do not dictate curriculum, so it’s really up to each institution to decide how they want to comply,” a spokeswoman from the department, Samara Yudof, said. “We really don’t foresee any enforcement issues.”A first-grade teacher, Abigail Hanlon, at P.S. 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said she hadn’t heard about the day and was surprised that it was going to be sprung on teachers with so little notice.“I don’t like that they’re just slipping it in and saying, ‘You got federal money, so you have to do this,'” Ms. Hanlon said. “Maybe some teachers need a refresher about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They might need some professional development and an opportunity to brainstorm some ideas first.”As for her own class, Ms. Hanlon said she can imagine running a discussion on the need for rules in the classroom and extending that to the need for rules governing the nation.Local colleges and universities, most of which receive some form of federal funds, also will be tipping their hats to the Constitution.In Flushing, the president of the student government at Queens Col lege, Joseph Bernstein, plans to distribute hundreds of free books that include the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, in exchange for donations to the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief efforts. The celebration at the City University of New York campus also will include a forum called “Is Our Constitution Prepared To Fight Terrorism?”Columbia University is sponsoring an exhibit of manuscripts from the John Jay Collection, including the first bound volume of the Federalist Papers, published in 1788.The president of New York University, John Sexton, who is also a former dean of the law school, will lead a discussion on the Constitution on September 22.A calendar paying tribute to the struggle for civic rights will be distributed at the CUNY Graduate Center, along with voter registration and citizenship information. While there is no calendar centerfold, the month of April features three suffragists voting in New York in 1917, and in May an American Indian senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, appears on his Harley Davidson in front of the Capitol.“It’s an important thing for Americans and people all over the world to understand the notion of people’s rights. What we take for granted as our rights came out of a real struggle, and that’s an important thing to understand,” an American historian who is vice president for information technology and external programs at CUNY Graduate Center, Stephen Brier, said.While he has organized a week of events, including a screening of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Mr. Brier said he is not keen on the directive coming down from the government.“It’s in the wisdom of Congress to do it this way,” he said. “I don’t think mandates are a very good idea in general…. It seems a little heavy-handed to me.”

By Law, Constitution Day Becomes Part of School Calendar

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