There was a quibble about which version to read, the original version or the current version that reflects revisions, amendments or deletions…. actually, they couldn’t even agree on what to call those. Rep. Goodlatte (R-Virginia) had decided it would be the 2010 version. That contest was easily resolved without any inconvenient turn to principles. It was a matter of privilege. It was Goodlatte’s idea to start the session this way so it was his privilege to select the text.

With that settled, reading the Constitution isn’t tricky. Where our politicians prove their mettle is when they decide what to make of it once it’s read. Will congressional freshman and their colleagues see their own eye staring at them from the text or will they see something more than they already knew was there?

The 10th Amendment was so anticipated during the performance that Rep. Goodlatte made sure he recited it himself and more than a dozen representatives were present to applaud as he did so. Did that group listen as intently to all the powers that were delegated to the United States by the Constitution? Did they notice there was no requirement that those powers be “expressly” or “specifically” granted? This is where the Constitution gets tricky. You have to read carefully for what isn’t there as much as what is and can’t make too much of one favorite clip without considering its relationship to the rest of the document.

If you only read your assigned portion or your favorite part before dashing out of the chamber, have you really read the Constitution? More importantly, have you considered what it requires of you in your role as an elected representative?

Reading the Constitution isn’t a bad idea but don’t stop there. What does it mean? The real debate lies in how we interpret the document and that debate is as old as we the people are. In Original Meanings, Jack Rakove characterizes the 1787 debate between Federalists and Antifederalists as a difference in political, perhaps even scientific, perspective:

If the framers were Newtonian of one kind in seeking to set different political forces in equillibrial opposition to one another, the Anti-Federalists were Newtonians of another stamp in thinking that the science of politics was grounded in universal laws. Their science comprised a fixed body of doctrine and cautionary lessons that were best applied to avert the risks of innovation… By contrast, for Federalists the science of politics was becoming experimental and dynamic in a modern sense (p. 152)

This same contest presents itself today when elected representatives think reading the Constitution on the House floor reveals everything we need to know. Considering these two different ideas about what to do next, it is easy to imagine the 112th’s performance will do little to change “business as usual” in Washington without continuing the discussion. In Rakove’s characterization, National Academy alumni will recognize the difference between nature represented as a a solid green line (Antifederalist) or a dotted one (Federalists). Students of Thomas Kuhn will recognize two competing paradigms or a contest to successfully articulate the one that will guide future efforts to govern. Whatever you see in Rakove’s analysis of the opposing viewpoints, the substance of the Constitution is revealed through its interpretation.

Whether green boxes, competing paradigms or different flavors of Newtonians, the real contest lies in determining what the Constitution means for the real work of governing. It doesn’t stop once the last words of the Constitution have been read. That’s only the beginning.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sharing ideas powered those offline communities as much as it fuels discussions here. We hope you’ll find a way to share your ideas in the next 100 posts. Tech guru Chris Brogan recently contemplated how sharing matters online. He organized his ideas around two propositions… sharing moves information more effectively and adds value to the larger tapestry. A guru from another era suggested freedom itself requires us to exercise our minds so they venture abroad and contemplate what lies beyond. Whether you take your cues from the world of tech or the dream of Scipio, here are some of our top posts for thinking richly, broadly and creatively.

• Hobbes21 carried colored boxes into the classroom with My Serial of Boxes (Part 1), (Part 2) and (Part 3). We also tried our best to share Kevin’s presentation on constitutional thinking and teaching from the 2008 National Academy.

• After the 2008 NEH Institute at Montpelier, Larry saw Federalist thinking in poetry, On Theory, Poetry and the American Constitution.

• Contemplate what it might mean to organize your school with a constitutional understanding through Shayne’s post, A School Based on Constitutional Citizenship. Stepwinder and Hobbes21 contemplated the model for A Federalist Education with guidance from Einstein’s biography.

• Politicolor was talking about Rube Goldberg machines before an OK-Go video challenged all the cool kids to make their own. It was a question about the American People and an Incredible Machine.

• When Laura left the NEH Institute at Montpelier, she realized she was surrounded by Federalist Moments while Larry wanted to provoke More Serious Questions about Constitutional Thinking.

• And lastly, because it’s all a question of an engaged citizenry, Katie Reen shared A Letter to My Students Past, Present and Future while Hexxus007 shared his thoughts on current modes of political discourse with Civic “Bad Boys” and “Astro-turf.“

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You can make this a conversation by sharing your thoughts as a reply in the comments section on this post or any of the others. If you’d like to join us as a regular contributor, drop that note in the comments and we’ll let you know how to get started.

That might be a way to describe our work at the National Academy and our discussions on Politicolor too. Civic education has to share this concern for illuminating complexities in political life.

Gibson also said we are most comfortable living ten years in the past. We’re blind to the potential of the technology we have because we’re just getting comfortable with the technology of our past. In a 2003 interview with The Economist, Gibson quipped, “The future is already here–it’s just not evenly distributed.”

And it’s this relationship between now, the future and the past that leads us to David Brooks’ column in the New York Times this week, “Two Theories of Change.”

In a short opinion piece, Brooks compares the characteristics of the French Enlightenment led by Descartes to a British Enlightenment led by Hume and Burke. With one focusing on the power of reason and the other emphasizing its limits, “these two views of human nature produced different attitudes toward political change.” One theory pursues radical change with each society embedded in an “eternal now,” while the other advocates incremental change informed by the past.

And here the thoughts of a science fiction author and a New York Times journalist fuse together to provide an essential vantage point for understanding contemporary politics. Brooks writes:

We Americans have never figured out whether we are children of the French or the British Enlightenment. Was our founding a radical departure or an act of preservation? This was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton, and it’s a bone of contention today, both between parties and within each one.

Brooks suggests a style of change emphasizing modesty, gradualism and balance has emerged from this contest between the French and British Enlightenment in the United States. Gibson’s observation that we are all more comfortable with our past also suggests a fundamental discomfort with change. Have Americans ever been as radical as their political vitriol imagines them to be?

In this 3 minute video, Derek Sivers suggests, whatever great idea you have, you might also consider that the opposite is also true.

Her current project, Asknature.org, is working to focus the biomimicry community on questions of form and function in nature to support the work of designers and engineers in communities all around us.

Think about your response. What do you believe that you cannot prove? How do you know it is true?

The first week of the National Academy has proposed a few possibilities–Cicero’s view from the spheres of heaven and Earth, Aristotle’s empiricism describing what he believes he sees and Madison’s “more thorough and critical survey… examining it on all its sides; comparing it in all its parts, and calculating its probable effects.” There is a truth present in your mind’s eye that cannot be experienced–touched, seen or heard. Yet you know this, whatever this is, as sure as you know what you can experience and share with others.

What is that you know and how do you know it? How do you share this knowledge with others and convince them it is true?

I believe we had our first real Constitutional moment during Wednesday’s final Presidental debate. In one of the final questions of the night Bob Schieffer, asked both candidates,”Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on Roe V Wade?”

McCain answers: “I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist”

But someone should have told McCain thats not federalism, thats devolution. The devaluing of the national structure in order for the oppresive majority to legally occur. And that his view in this case is actually antifederal, McCain believes that states should be able to vote the way they want so the majority of the individual states, can overrule rghts that all Americans agree are found in the Constitution.( the blue box is more important then the purple box)

Obama answered the question in this manner “And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.”
Now we have a true federalist answer. That the majority cannot be oppresive to the supermajority. That our government is designed not to support the majority, but guarantee the rights of the supermajority. That Purple is greater then the blue box.

I am glad that we finally had 3 minutes out of three hours, where there was at least an attempt to actually deal with the governing document of this country.

We’ve all wondered whether we’re still part of that process.  Over the years, our species has gradually removed ourselves from the brutality of natural selection.  Americans, especially, have enjoyed long periods without significant culling; so do we yet evolve?  Garreau thinks so.  Physically, we create medicine that can alter our appearances and heal our wounds, while other intellectual constructions seem to grow exponentially.  Can humans maintain control over these creations?  His book’s subtitle alludes to the wisdom it will take to guide this giant: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human.  What follows is an argument over what course that path looks like: heaven, hell, or prevail.

The heaven scenario involves advances so great that nanotechnology works invisibly around us, and our bodies regenerate into perpetuity.  Societies, thriving on our highest human emotions, live far from the reptilian R-complex.  Art and music elevate, while education becomes the most important career in the world.  Machines shrink to miniscule, while their capabilities unfold endlessly.

Hell offers the negative: class warfare between the haves and have-nots, pretties versus uglies; technology so advanced that it achieves sentience—then replicates itself.  It’s nothing we haven’t imagined between The Matrix and Blade Runner back to its source at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

What is different is that these diametric views are examined and upheld by visionaries who are helping to create it.  While most scientists, computer geniuses, and government-sponsored gurus see their work as seeds planted toward Eden, there are many others who fear dragon teeth being sown.  Bill Joy, the founder of networking giant Sun Microsystems and known in geekdom as the Edison of the Internet, emerges as one interesting story.  Clearly no Luddite, Joy’s vision once anticipated a Star Trekian future, but now glares sidelong at the mechanism of the Empire.  The complexity of this man cannot be summarized here, nor can any of the fascinating characters Garreau profiles.  Suffice it to say that each offers a perspective utterly human in its depth.

More federalist than anti-federalist thought is expanded upon in the next two sections of the book: prevail and transcendence.  Another personality, Martin E. P. Seligman suggests three levels of happiness: the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life.  The pleasant one is all downhill racing: base pleasures and Sushi feelings.  This may be where many Americans find themselves—whether that be through computer porn or Viagra, Cartoon Network or crack.  The good life rises above this.  Referencing Aristotle and Jefferson, Seligman sees something more than existence; he sees a life that is fully lived.  Even better than a life in tune, though, is a life in chorus.  The meaningful life is one in which the instrument of one joins the symphony of all with great elegance and complexity.  The latter view rings as Madisonian; it’s the citizen harmonizing with the Constitution.  Or, through National Academy metaphor, it is Will’s brown box growing up through the center of the spectrum and bearing beautiful rainbow-colored fruit.

If the author leans toward an advancement of humanity, the reader should not be surprised.  After all, the title of the work suggests a continuation, rather than The End.  Garreau makes no hypothesis about the length this evolution will take.  Experts who don’t forecast a technological maelstrom, range from those who think perfection will rise as a tsunami of advancement called The Singularity to those who predict a more gradual tide.

Most importantly, the author goes beyond a catalog of neat inventions to the thought needed to manage such a wave.  How can we control this evolution without the ultimate wipe-out?  As a teacher, I can’t help but imagine the role of a well-rounded education in all of this.  Clearly, literature, history, and communication help us to perceive such changes, while a well-constituted government provides balance to the Constitution’s board.  Can we produce thinkers able to ride the rising swell?  Will we realize that the technical instruction manual of standardized tests can never replace the feel of paddling out, popping up, and surfing?

Garreau’s work suggests that we had better learn quickly.  In a world economy, to remain stoically anti-federalist may just leave Americans as hydrophobic doomsayers gawking at the wall of a world-cleansing flood.  While a ride upon The Wave—one dwarfing both the dawn of industry and the hope of Renaissance—Duuuude, that would be the totality of all that is rad.

A few words from my fourth-graders (non-speakers) when asked today by the panel what they had learned from the experience: “I learned what private domain is.”  “Compromise.”  “Better research skills.”  “How a bill becomes a law.”  “How long it takes to pass a bill.”  “A lot about pollution and landfills.”

In our first few sessions, my 4th-6th grade students narrowed their choices for the project to these rough ideas: Save Bears, Clean-Up Michigan’s Rivers, Fix the Litter in Detroit.  The more we delved into the text, students discovered that those topics really weren’t clear proposals for public policy.  They also gained a ton of knowledge regarding sovereignty, as well as private sphere/civil society/ government.  The more they learned, the more focused their idea became, and their eventual choice–EXPAND MICHIGAN’S BOTTLE LAW–ended up as a wonderful combination of the early favorites.

The four areas of the portfolio–PROBLEM, ALTERNATIVE POLICIES, OUR SOLUTION, and ACTION PLAN–serve as a fantastic outline for anyone of any age attempting to bring about change.

The panel presentation in a committee room at the state capitol was the pinnacle of the experience.  Having misjudged time, our project came down to the wire (lesson learned: start early!); as a result, the kids didn’t first benefit and learn from a local session.  However, they could not have done any better than what I witnessed today.  Thorough preparation pays dividends, and I was so proud of my students for presenting without reading from a page.  (It does make a difference, I can tell you, as we were able to observe a high school group who did just that.)

We will be participating in Project Citizen next year, and in the years after!  Sincerely, the entire process has been one of the most valuable of my entire teaching career.

If you have any questions about Project Citizen, right down to the tooth ‘n’ nails, feel free to contact me at montessorinorth@comcast.net, or pose your questions here.