Living Constitutionally in School, in Life | Dr. David Bobb | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 so Constitution days September 17th and we celebrated observe it every year what happens on September 18th what do we do what do we as citizens as members of a community school how do we carry forth these values from Constitution Day into

0:20 our daily lives and into our civil discourse well just as with the original Constitution day September 17 it marked not an end but a beginning because it was at that point that the Constitution was sent for it to the states for ratification and what ensued was a big old brouhaha big a big battle and it was

0:41 a very hard-fought very hard-fought effort I think that call to action for for us today in the classrooms across America is to take seriously the plural existence of our students in the early part of a school year it’s a great time to learn that what makes each one of

1:03 these individuals unique what do they bring to the table how can we understand who they are and that’s such a challenge I know so many of the teachers with whom we work have every year a great number of students that they’re coming to know but each of them has a story what are those stories and then the

1:23 challenge is how in a classroom setting just like we do in civil society and as we seek to do over the course of a year and over the course of years in our country how do we forge an you know it’s done through the hard work of dialogue of Socratic engagement of drawing out

1:45 from students what makes what animates them what are their passions how to channel those passions how to see those ambitions made real pick some problems what are some problems in your local community that seem intractable channel the prodigious energy of those students of each of those unique individuals into

2:07 an idea that we can come together and solve those problems if we keep our eyes on the North Star the North Star is promised in the Declaration of Independence is that all human beings are created equal and that we all enjoy the rights of life liberty the pursuit of happiness it sounds easy it’s really hard but over the course of a school year a lot can be

2:27 accomplished I think when you keep going back to that touchstone keep going back to that idea of the Munem and figure out at the end of the year how’d you do what are those things that are still unresolved because there’s gonna be a lot of them you know that the interesting thing about our constitutional position today as a country of 325 million people is that

2:48 none of these issues is ever going to be tied up in a neat bow and said boy good we’re done with that one right we solved that one it’s off our plates now but what we can continue to strive for is more conversation that is meaningful not just trying to get to a kumbaya where we say boy we’re just gonna have to agree

3:08 to disagree but really digging in and saying no let’s go to the places where we disagree let’s let’s talk about the issue of immigration today let’s put aside the rancor as rhetoric because that has no place in a classroom those weaponization of words really bad and we work really assiduously at the Bill of Rights Institute support teachers in that all-important task of engaging

3:30 students in these very real critical conversations but I would just encourage everyone to to go there to go to those difficult conversations on a daily basis and I think some really remarkable things can happen in this country