OPINION:
Wednesday is Constitution Day in recognition of the signing of the document in 1787 by members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Unlike July 4 celebrating the nation’s independence from Great Britain in 1776, Sept. 17 is not a day off for Americans. Nor is it deeply rooted in the nation’s history. Rather, it was created by an amendment proposed by Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who always carried a copy of the Constitution in his breast pocket, to the Omnibus Spending Bill of 2004. The amendment mandated providing instructional programming on the history of the Constitution in all publicly funded educational institutions, interpreted a year later by the U. S. Department of Education to mean any funded by Washington.
To be sure, various states had earlier observed Sept. 17 as a special day. Iowa, for instance, did as early as 1911, and during the 1950s, Congress changed an “I Am An American Day” designation of some states to a Citizenship Day as well as a Constitutional Week (from Sept. 17 to 23). But whether a Citizenship Day or Constitution Day, Sept. 17 is still a day in search of a proper recognition.
For example, the Constitution’s major competitor for recognition is the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. It was a day to be honored subsequently, and rightly so. But the 1,458-word Declaration was the work of a five-person committee that deliberated for less than three weeks on the document. By contrast, the 4,543-word Constitution was the more carefully constructed. Members of the convention worked from May 25, 1787, to mid-September on the final document (about 100 working days, with only 10 days off).
Moreover, unlike the Constitution, every word of which is important, there’s a lot of propaganda in the Declaration, designed to move uncommitted states to the break with Britain. King George III is charged with all sorts of unlawful actions, some of which are sweepingly hyperbolic that could not have been committed, as illustrated by the following: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
Of course, a significant reason that Sept. 17 wasn’t a day of celebration beginning in 1787 was because the Constitution wasn’t binding until nine states ratified it. The votes in some state legislatures were cliffhangers: New York’s was 30 to 27 in favor; Virginia, 89 to 79; and Massachusetts, 187 to 168. Even during the Constitutional Convention, not all state representatives stayed around to vote. In fact, there were never more than 11 states voting on provisions of the document during the convention. Of the 42 delegates present on Sept. 17, just 39 signed.
Sadly, the intent of Byrd’s amendment — to shed light on the history of the Constitution and, by implication, its provisions — hasn’t been honored. In recent polls, only about 40 percent of Americans could name the three branches of government set forth in the Constitution. About three out of every four didn’t know the length of a U.S. senator’s term, and 71 percent were unaware that the supreme law of the land was, in fact, the Constitution. Only about half of respondents knew that a two-thirds vote in Congress was required to overturn a presidential veto. And, of course, these polls test only the knowledge about the original Constitution and not the 27 amendments that have been ratified.
The problem is that contemporary educators are loathe to rely on rote and memory for students, with the latest fad, as reflected by the Common Core standards adopted by most states, emphasizing problem-solving. That may well be good for some subjects, but there is a font of knowledge that must be put to memory, no matter that this can be readily accessed by students through computers and the like. Moreover, memory training has an enormous benefit for the developing mind as well as for keeping it supple during the aging process.
The Constitution should be the most revered and understood document in United States history. It is the shortest and oldest of similar documents among major world powers. John Adams put it best by noting that it is the “greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.”
Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University.
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