Contest Designers Base Their Case on Constitution

The testing of Jane Sure’s organizational skills will come a year from now.

That’s when she expects to be helping coordinate a national testing program for millions of high school students from her tiny office in an out-of-the-way Calabasas industrial park.

Sure is assistant director of the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit group that is planning the competition to test students’ understanding of the U. S. Constitution.

The contest is designed to be part of a six-year national commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Ambitious Undertaking

If it comes off as planned, the competition will breathe new life into the two documents for as many as 5.5 million schoolchildren--931,855 the first year--during the bicentennial celebration, Sure said.

“We feel it’s really going to catch on,” she said. “It’s going to be very exciting.”

If nothing else, the contest idea is ambitious.

The Calabasas planners say they expect to stage the competition in each of the 435 congressional districts in the nation with the help of representatives’ field offices and local school systems.

Participating schools will receive instructional books on the Constitution prepared by the center. After students receive 30 hours of class work based on the book, they will be given a two-part test, according to the contest planners.

The first part of the test will be a multiple-choice exam taken by the entire class. The second part will be a moot court on constitutional issues between representatives of competing classes. It will be judged by local lawyers and educators.

Classes will be rated on the basis of their combined scores, with winning classes advancing to regional and state competition.

From there, each state’s top class will be sent to Washington for springtime competitions to be held during each of the six years of the constitutional bicentennial. A national winner will be picked each year.

Officials at the Calabasas center predict that it will cost them about $18 million to stage the competition between 1987 and 1992, when the bicentennial ends.

Because of the mom-flag-and-apple pie nature of the venture, however, they expect to have no difficulty raising the money from federal grants.

Since its creation in 1981 as an educational offshoot of State Bar of California, the Center for Civic Education has relied on such grants to administer a “law in a free society” teacher-training program, officials said.

The program provides teachers with books and filmstrips to lead discussions based on the concepts of responsibility, justice, privacy and authority.

Charles N. Quigley, the center’s founder and executive director, said that his group has been successful because liberal and conservative lawmakers alike support its nonpartisan approach to the study of government.

Each side feels its political position will be embraced by students once they learn to independently analyze fundamental democratic principles, Quigley said.

A first-draft version of the competition lesson book includes sections such as, “What ideas from political philosophy did the founders of our country bring to the Constitutional Convention?”

On an Uninhabited Planet

In that section, students are told to imagine that their schoolmates are transported to an uninhabited planet, then asked to “think like a philosopher.” Would there be any government to control how they lived, freedoms they exercised or property they owned?

Students then are told how political philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes answered those questions.

The multimillion-dollar Constitution competition is a far cry from the center’s usual teacher training work, which costs about $800,000 a year. The center has 10 employees and expects to hire more as the project progresses.

Funding for the contest has turned Quigley, a Topanga Canyon resident, into a Washington lobbyist who spends about one week a month in the capital, he said.

This week, he is there helping lead an international conference on “constitutional government and the development of an enlightened citizenry.” On Monday night he hosted a reception for conference participants at the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The odds of receiving funding for the competition are extremely good,” Quigley said from Washington. “Congress has passed a law authorizing $5 million a year on bicentennial education. Now I’m trying to get the appropriation.”

To launch the contest, Quigley already has obtained $550,000.

The Calabasas center was awarded a $450,000 grant late last year from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Last month, it received $100,000 from the federal Department of Education.

Secretary of Education William J. Bennett personally selected the center’s project for funding after conducting a national competition of his own by using about $2.5 million in discretionary grants.

The center is using its money to print and distribute the first-draft versions of the Constitution competition study book, which will be reviewed by 11th-grade civics teachers.

Eight thousand copies will be delivered this week to schools in 20 congressional districts in 15 states for field testing, Sure said.

“Our approach is conceptual and analytical, not the memorization of dates and facts,” she said. “That’s what sets us apart from other curriculums. We try to give kids tools to handle the social, political and legal issues they will face all their lives.

“We’re trying to make them into competent, responsible citizens by giving them analytical tools. You don’t do it by giving them facts to memorize.”