Watching a Jay Leno segment was the final straw for state Sen. Patrick Colbeck.
“They were asking people questions about our founding — nobody knew,” Colbeck (R-Canton) explained. “Only one in 1,000 Americans can name one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. People are not aware of their rights or when their rights are being violated; with the backdrop of American government right now, this needs to change.”
Colbeck is sponsoring the Good Citizenship bill, one in a set of three bills being introduced in the state legislature which aim to reform and protect how Michigan’s public school’s social studies curriculum is taught.
The Good Citizenship bill (S. 209) was introduced in the Senate last year, approved, and then killed on House floor. The bill intends to reform K-12 history classes, so they focus on American heritage. This would include students studying documents such as the Declaration of Independence and both the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions.
Also, Colbeck wants this information to appear on the Michigan Educational Assessment Test and Michigan Merit Examination.
“Like John Jay (an American founding figure who helped write the Federalist Papers) said, we should be studying and instructing on a regular basis to know when our rights are being violated,” Colbeck said.
State Sen. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, is sponsoring the American Heritage bill (S. 211), which would help implement Colbeck’s Good Citizenship curriculum since its purpose is to “stop the fake police from coming in and ripping historical material out of teachers’ hands,” Colbeck said, who calls it an “anti-censorship” bill.
If passed, this bill would restrict school boards from censoring religious references when teaching founding documents. Shirkey said this bill is not meant to mandate what schools teach in the classroom, but protect “those who wish to teach it.”
He added that founding documents aren’t taught in classrooms because they are “controversial.”
“One reason I hear that we don’t educate more in this area is because it can become too controversial, because religious references are sometimes intertwined with our founding documents, so we need to avoid teaching them,” Shirkey said in an email. “That type of revisionist history makes no sense.”
State Sen. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake, is sponsoring the “Patriot Week Bill” (S. 210), the third piece of legislation in the set.
This bill would permit schools to observe Patriot Week. Patriot week, Sept. 11 through Sept. 17, is a week dedicated to appreciating America’s freedoms and honoring veterans and current members of the armed forces.
“This important piece of legislation ensures that children will have appropriate, grade-level instruction from third grade until 12th regarding veteran appreciation, first principles, key American principles, founding documents, and important historical events,” Kowall said in a March 16 press release.
While the senators don’t know how quickly the legislation will be passed, Shirkey hopes to implement the changes by the fall.
