Living up to aim of the Founding Fathers? – Helen K. Foss

For most of my adult life, I have focused on education. While the preamble to the Constitution does not mention education, each of its clauses calls for an educated public to make the vision of the Constitution work.

A system of justice, let alone a defense organization, needs highly educated leaders and a workforce of competent players. The same can be said of promoting “the general welfare” and “secur[ing] the blessings of liberty.” Most important at its core, the framers of the Constitution knew that for a democracy to work, it was essential that the public be capable of making decisions.

The preamble articulates the aspiration of the framers of the Constitution and still is held as a common goal by most Americans – all of us who are the “posterity” the framers were envisioning. Years later, we are still working on that “more perfect union” part. But who were “We the people”?

At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, they were limited to those who were over 21 and owned property. That eliminated all women, slaves, and Native Americans and any immigrants who did not possess land.

Today, America is made up of a far richer mix of ethnicities than were ever imagined in 1787. Today’s “We the people” more than ever need to be an educated public to be capable to make decisions and to play important roles in our society – to elect leaders who can serve us and our country well, to advocate for our welfare, and to play essential roles from doctors to plumbers, from engineers to farmers, from teachers to police.

The framers could not have envisioned today’s United States, let alone the growing chasm between the very rich and the very poor. Like other states, Delaware’s students from low-income families are consistently scoring very poorly on achievement tests. How will these children become the adults of tomorrow who have the knowledge of science and civics and can call for appropriate public policy decisions?

Like other states, Delaware minority school suspension and expulsion rates are disproportionately high and lead to disproportionately high minority dropouts. Like other states, Delaware’s prisons hold a disproportionately high minority population who are largely dropouts from our schools. How have we found ourselves in the 21st century spending more per year per prisoner than the cost per year for a college student?

And how have we come to the point where we invest so heavily in prison populations who, when they leave, often have little to no job skills, nowhere to live and most often find themselves returning to crime and back in prison.

Delaware has invested much into our education system. Over the past 20-plus years we have worked hard to re-think schools and find ways to help all our children find academic success. Yet still we are challenged to help far too many children who have not reached target levels.

I wonder how many of us think about how all our children’s success is as important to us as the framers of our Constitution understood. It is important for us to have graduates who know where to find information, are able to analyze, and who feel the civic responsibility to be involved in decisions – whether they be regarding community health or rezoning or groundwater use or voting regulations or school board decisions about attendance zones or curriculum.

Even the most self-serving of us senior citizens should appreciate the benefits of today’s children entering the workforce and helping to pay our Social Security and Medicare.

It is important to use this annual observance of the signing of our Constitution as a reminder of the need for all of us to give voice to our opinions on civic matters, at minimum by voting, and why an effective school system is critical to our democracy.

So, who are “We the People” today? Is it all of us? Or, just some of us? Very serious food for thought at this observance.

Helen K. Foss, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, was a former education adviser to former Gov. Michael Castle and served as the executive director of the Delaware Region National Conference of Christians and Jews.