No, I will not be telling the world what my political views are. If I won't even tell my mom who I am voting for, surely I will not be telling the world. This post is actually about me teaching the voting process to my students this week. Talk about a hoot!
Yesterday we went over the job of the Legislative and Judicial branches of government. This is all fine and good. The kids are generally floored when I reveal that the job of Supreme Court Justice is (GASP!) a job that you hold for your entire life! This was punctuated by the following question from one of the 5th graders: "So, you keep the job until you DIE???" Un-fricking-believable! Yeah. They thought that was relatively cool. We talked about how a justice gets picked and that the Senate has to approve the person that the President picks. They though this was cool. Mr. President has to answer to the Senate in that respect.
Today was devoted to the Executive Branch. This is always the kicker. I don't know about the rest of you, but I seriously don't recall learning about our voting process until I was well into high school. I love teaching this to kids this age. They have a very innate sense of fairness and this really gets them thinking. Today we talked about requirements for running, the process of running and then the actual election that will take place on November 2nd. The whole concept of the Electoral College is a great way to surprise the kids and really get them thinking about our voting. I figure- if kids can understand why every vote counts, why can't the rest of the nation? Anyway- I rained on their parade. I taught them that the person who wins the popular vote doesn't necessarily win the election. We talked about the while E.C. thing. The main thing they took away was two-fold: 1) If you want to be President it is always good to win the most votes. However, you also want to win the most votes in the highly populated states because they have more votes in the E.C. and 2) The E.C. isn't a fair system any more.
Number 2 also led to what I refer to: THE BEAUTY OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. Are you ready? This is what I teach my kids:
Our Founding Fathers did something really wonderful. They realized that how we run the country back in the 1800's is not going to be the same way we run it 100 or 200 years from then. As such, they built in the ability for us to CHANGE things. We have to go through a formal process, but it is possible to add or take away things that don't work for us in our Constitution anymore. Finally, dear reader, I give to you this parting thought. After all 13 students agreed that this, indeed, was a great thing one question was raised:
"So, is the Constitution in pencil? I mean, if we do end up changing something do we just go in and erase it?"
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3 comments:
Did you play them the amendment song from the Simpsons?
Unfortunately, I don't think (even under the circumstances that it does relate to the curriculum) my principal would approve me showing the Simpsons in my class. :) We will be using the old School House Rocks video if I can get my hands on it, though!
By a super, super long shot, one of the RD's at college who delivered sermons during our student chapels played a bunch of clips of The Simpsons. It was supposed to be about The Simpsons view of God and what is right/wrong with what they are telling people. Looking back at it now, I have no idea what he said. But it was entertaining.
For a Christian college, though, it was also pretty inappropriate. =)
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