To coincide with Constitution Day last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, together with the Bill of Rights Institute, launched a curriculum titled the College Bill of Rights, aimed at educating high schoolers on their guaranteed rights before they head off to college. According to FIRE’s Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, the curriculum will fill the gap in knowledge that exists for too many students and families who, even as they enter and leave college, never understand how the First Amendment is supposed to protect them.
Interested students can study the curriculum at smartphone-friendly website collegebillofrights.org. The website also hosts the lesson plans that teachers can download for free, including all the accompanying materials and resources.
But the curriculum doesn’t stop there — further updates for students are also available. Teachers can sign up to receive FIRE’s and the Institute’s other academic programs including the Bill of Rights Institute lesson plans and FIRE’s Guides to Student Rights on Campus.
FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors believed that on Constitution Day, as well as every other day, educating young people about their rights is the first and vital step to making sure those rights are not eventually lost.
“As FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors says, ‘A nation that does not educate in liberty will not long preserve it, and will not even know when it is lost.’ Today, FIRE and the Bill of Rights Institute are taking another step towards ensuring that the United States will not become such a nation.”
Kors believes that teaching the College Bill of Rights curriculum is one way of making sure that the United States is not one of the countries that loses their rights due to lack of understanding of how to protect them and take advantage of them.
FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, academic freedom, due process, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America can be viewed atthefire.org.
The Bill of Rights Institute is a not for profit charity focused on providing educational resources on America’s Founding documents and principles for teachers and students of American History and Civics. The mission of the Bill of Rights Institute is to educate young people about the words and ideas of America’s Founders, the liberties guaranteed in our Founding documents, and how our Founding principles continue to affect and shape a free society.