The mission of the Illinois First Amendment Center is to promote First
Amendment rights and responsibilities through education designed to raise
awareness of the need to understand, preserve, and protect the First Amendment.
They have created an extensive curriculum for the study of the First Amendment
available by email, cd, or print. The Center states that:
Lest anyone think that First Amendment curricula are well established,
thoroughly understood, and conscientiously applied in schools, consider findings
of the January 2005 Knight Foundation report of high school students’
understanding of their freedoms:
• Nearly 75% of those polled say they don’t know how they feel about the
First Amendment or that they take it for granted.
• Students are less likely than adults to think that people should be allowed
to express unpopular opinions or that newspapers should be allowed to publish
freely without government approval of stories.
• 75% of those polled lack knowledge and understanding about key aspects of
the First Amendment and its protections.
Without question there is an urgent need for committed teaching, lively
debate, and consistent application of the First Amendment. A unit on the First
Amendment seems particularly relevant to literature, journalism, and social
studies courses. But it can be applied with equal relevance to a music class
discussion of controversial songs and censorship or to a science class exploring
the Darwinian theory of evolution and the inherent religious implications. |
