Alexandria, Virginia.--Happy Birthday to the Bill of Rights -- NOT! Today the Bill of Rights is 203 years old, but to many Americans it has become a growing irrelevancy.
The speaker-elect of the House of Representatives plans hearings in all 50 states on a constitutional amendment to restore official prayer in the public schools, and the president of the United States is all ears. Never mind that it would be the first time the Bill of Rights has ever been amended. So what if it would abolish separation of church and state, a principle that America invented and that religious people struggled for centuries to establish?
Thanks to the so-called "War on Drugs," the Fourth Amendment now has so many holes that it looks like a doily. And in Great Britain, where the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination originated, the government recently began instructing suspects that if they don't cooperate with police, that fact can be used against them in sentencing. Can crime-obsessed America be far behind?
Real problems face our nation. Violence -- in the schools and on the streets -- is tearing the country apart. But why must the popular answer to any critical issue be to sidestep the Constitution?
Probably because we don't realize what we have. More than 200 years of constitutional government gets old after awhile. We have to be reminded -- constantly -- of the value of what we already possess. We must learn how to ratify the Constitution and the Bill of Rights every day.
That's where civic education comes in. Good citizenship requires study, like any other skill. Yet too many advocates of education reform call for more science and math -- not more civics and American government. This despite the fact that not everyone will be chemists or engineers, but all will be citizens.
Indeed, in many states, American government is not even a required class for high school graduation. Often, states attempt to fold the basic principles of American government into the U.S. history curriculum. But in a course where every year teachers make a mad -- to reach World War II before school ends, how much attention can the Constitution and the Bill of Rights possibly get?
In the November election -- hailed as a watershed by the media and the Republicans -- a whopping 37 percent of the electorate bothered to show up. The resulting Republican "mandate" consists of one in five American voters. America is becoming more like an oligarchy than a democracy, in which a fraction of the population still interested in voting makes the decisions for .. everyone else.
It's time to ask why Johnny can't govern. When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. government poured millions of dollars into science and mathematics education. Why isn't the nation just as concerned about its civic decline?
America's tradition of constitutional democracy is its most singular attribute, its greatest gift to humanity and its most vulnerable virtue. For democracy is not hereditary: You get it from your peers. When fewer and fewer people participate in the endeavor, and even fewer are trained in the skills of citizenship, we should not be surprised that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights fall into disrepute.
Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law has published a new book, "Civics for Democracy: A Journey for Teachers and Students," that helps stem the tide of civic illiteracy. Too often it reads like a government report, not a manual for students, but Mr. Nader is on the right track. Young people need to know the history of how citizen movements have made a difference in U.S. government. And they need laboratory training in citizenship, just as in biology and chemistry.
Students can't drive without proper training; why shouldn't we also train them how to be citizens? The state of Maryland, for example, has a mandatory citizenship test that students must pass to graduate from high school. This is a worthy attempt to require a minimum amount of civic knowledge in the curriculum, but cognitive skills alone are not enough.
More compelling are intensive, hands-on programs that actively involve students in decision-making. One such program is conducted by the Close Up Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization in Alexandria, Virginia. About 25,000 students and teachers travel to Washington every year to take part in Close Up's week-long government-studies programs. Participants meet with opinion makers and government officials, and they learn that democracy is not a spectator sport.
Often, they are inspired to get involved themselves. This year a group of former Close Up students from Arizona dedicated a museum within the Lincoln Memorial that they helped build. When they first visited the memorial in 1989 as part of the Close Up program, they were surprised that nothing there commemorated Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. At the time, Arizona itself did not celebrate the national holiday honoring King.
The students conducted a nationwide penny-saving campaign to recognize King's speech. After years of dealing with the National Park Service's regulations, they finally succeeded in building a museum in the Lincoln Memorial's basement that explains its history and describes the many landmark civic protests that occurred there.
Such students prove that a spark of civic virtue still glows within every American. It is what defines us as a nation. Our challenge is to fan that spark into a flame that never goes out.
Linda R. Monk is the author of "The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide," which won the American Bar Association's Gavel Award.