Teaching Ideas for Chapter 2:
The Constitution
The Constitution establishes the rules of the political game. These rules decentralize power rather than consolidating power in the hands of the executive or the legislature. Ask your students to debate the following questions: Would American government be more efficient if power were concentrated within a single branch of government? Would it be more effective?
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention constituted an educational and economic elite, not the "common man." Ask your students to consider whether an elite can be representative of people from other strata in society. Expand the question to consider contemporary problems such as racism and poverty.
Assign Federalist #51 (in the Appendix of the text). Then ask for an evaluation of Madison's words: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition..." How do these words fit into the constitutional framework that was adopted? How well do these words reflect the needs of the 1990's?
It often surprises students to learn that Great Britain has no written constitution. Call for class discussion of how democracy can exist in a nation with no written constitution. Broaden the question to include unwritten aspects of the U.S. Constitution.
Ask students to identify which features of the Constitutions reflect a distrust of democracy. Who didn't the Framers trust? Do we have similar beliefs today?
Government in America points out that "one of the central themes of American history is the gradual democratization of the Constitution." Ask your class to evaluate this statement and to either substantiate or refute it.