Designing Instruction on the Declaration of Independence

Let’s say you’re teaching history, social studies, or civics.

Information in the textbook includes only:

1. A few facts about the D of I: who wrote it, when it was written, when it was signed, how it came after a series of events in British-American relations.

2. The main points: about unalienable rights; the purpose of government; the right to abolish or alter a government.

However, you feel that this is superficial; it’s not enough.

*** You have read serious historians, who point out the importance of students reading America’s founding documents. http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/ http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/seminars/2002/flannery_readings.ht ml#1

*** You have read enough history (Greece, Rome, Russia, Germany, Cuba, China) to know how easily freedom can be lost. That sometimes it is taken by force, but sometimes the people are so ignorant, dependent, easily persuaded by a smooth voice and utopian talk, that they elect leaders who alter the nature of the relationship between citizens and government in order to enact their visions of equality, peace, and prosperity (e.g., more and more rules and regulations and restrictions). http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html#3monarchy http://home.ca.inter.net/~grantsky/collectivism.html

*** You know that most civilian deaths have resulted NOT from war, but from wide-scale murder of civilians by their own governments---democide. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ *** You have read the wisdom of some of the founders of our nation…

John Adams. http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/letter/

“Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of Stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it… “ [John Adams, 1775 in a note to Abigail Adams

And Jefferson. On education.

And political philosophers:

John Dalberg, Lord Acton. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Acton

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition. ["Nationality" in Home and Foreign Review (July 1862); republished in The History of Freedom and Other Essays (1907), p. 288]

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. [Letter to Mary Gladstone (24 April 1881); later published in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (1913) p. 73]

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did not wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. [Letter to Mandell Creighton (April [3? or 5?], 1887) - some normally reliable sources indicate April 3, and others indicate April 5]

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. [Letter to Mandell Creighton (April [3? or 5?], 1887) published in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)]

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, V. II. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

*** And you believe that citizens who take freedom for granted and who do not know how our government is supposed to work, and what the limits of its powers are (constitutionally) supposed to be, will surely not notice a movement towards tyranny---like the frog who is boiled to death because the water is heated so slowly.

Therefore, you want students to read the D of I closely---followed by the U.S. Constitution.

Your objectives are:

1. Students will state the definitions of concepts (vocabulary) and use these definitions to examine examples and nonexamples; e.g., The People, tyranny, despotism, unalienable right, political band, dissolve, usurpation, colony, monarchy, etc.

2. Students will explain why the D of I is a persuasive document.

In doing so they will a. Describe the D of I as a deductive argument. The first premise (theory of government in para 2: If X happens, then Y can/should/will happen), the second premise (facts relevant to the theory: X happened), and conclusion (Therefore Y can/should/will happen).

b. Identify at least five rhetorical devices in the D of I. 3. Students will restate in a series of declarative statements the theory of legitimate government found in paragraph 2.

Now, read the D of I and identify in it all that you want students to learn that is relevant to the objectives.

Do a knowledge analysis. What pre-skills do they need in order to read the D of I in a way that will enable them to achieve the objectives?

1. What deductive arguments look like and how the conclusion of valid deductive arguments is self-evident and compelling.

http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e01.htm

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?ID=L384

2. What a proposition is---a statement of a rule relationship. Two kinds. a. Categorical. All X is inside P. All dogs are canines. All persons have certain unalienable rights.

No X is P. No cats are canines. No government whose power does not derive from the consent of the governed is legitimate.

b. Causal or hypothetical. When X happens, Y (can, will, must) happen. If and only if X happens will, can, must Y happen. If X (happens, increases, decreases), Y (happens, does not happen, increases, decreases) If the government no longer secures the unalienable rights

of the people, the people have the right and duty to alter or abolish it.

3. How to translate complex and/or flowery sentences into simple propositions. “To the extent that we can know anything, we may be sure that we know our existence.” = All persons with knowledge know that they exist. Or, if there is no self-knowledge, there is no other knowledge.

4. Some concepts must be taught before students read the D of I—or else it won’t make much sense. What is a declaration? What is meant by independence? What is the difference between freedom and liberty? [Liberty has political connotations---liberty IN a political system. Freedom is more general. Freedom in the wide-open spaces.]

Some concepts require definitions. These should be taught prior to reading a paragraph, so the flow won’t be interrupted. Others can be taught with synonyms in context. “…endowed by their Creator [God] with certain unalienable [Can’t be taken away. Part of human nature] rights…