The Misunderstandings of the Constitution
Throughout the history of this nation there has always been misconceptions regarding the Constitution. In the first chapter of A Machine That Would Go of Itself, Michael Kammen discusses some of these misconceptions of the Constitution, including confusion, interpretation, impact, attitudes toward and parallels. All of these elements are contributing factors that make our Constitution unique, distinct yet ambiguous. In dealing with these characteristics, Kammen breaks them up into five segments: confusion within the Constitution by the American people, attitudes towards the Constitution by the people, people’s comprehension of the Constitution, conflict within consensus, and parallels to the Constitution. Of these five causes people’s comprehension of the Constitution is the main cause of misconception. This is due to the lack of education students are receiving in the classroom. “Research of the past twenty-five years indicates that most adolescents are incapable of high-level cognitive ability when thinking about legal or moral issues of the kind raised by controversies over constitutional rights” (Patrick 3). Kammen explains that confusion within the Constitution is based on the fact that there are a number of
When looking at all these aspects of misunderstanding the Constitution the problem boils down to one issue: the American people are uneducated when it comes to understanding the principles of the Constitution. John Patrick supports this idea in Education on the U.S. Constitution by stating, “Most Americans are exposed to the Constitution at least three times in secondary school. These formal courses of study expose students to ideas in the Constitution as well as the document’s origin and development, and it’s relevance to citizenship and government of the United States. Despite these ample opportunities for education on the Constitution, many Americans have failed to learn or retain important knowledge, values, and attitudes about constitutional rights and liberties” (1). vague articles and clauses. These articles can be interpreted in many ways depending on your opinion of how the Framers intended them. Benjamin Franklin’s assessment of the differing views of the Constitution was, “when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.” The Framers themselves were unclear on how they wanted to word certain sections. Though the Supreme Court has helped define these sections with court rulings, a number of ar
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Approximate Word count = 933
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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