It's like something from a Cold War propaganda movie: The Internet and newspapers have to be approved by the government before publication and speech critical of government officials is punishable by law.
No, it's not a movie in the making or a conspiracy theorist's latest concoction. This is the future of the United States of America if the nation's students don't become more educated about their rights and freedoms.
According to a survey released early this year, about three in four high school students are unsure how they feel about the First Amendment or say they take it for granted, and they're severely misinformed about their rights to free speech.
And that's just the First Amendment - odds are most of us know even less about the rest of the Constitution.We cannot expect to secure and maintain the freedoms given us by the Constitution and its amendments unless we know what they are. We can't fight for our liberty or argue against infringements upon it if we don't even understand where it comes from.
If these children are our future and they're so misinformed about the very backbone of our government - which is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people - there's no end to the possibilities of government censorship and reduction of civil rights.
Many are blaming our high schools, claiming that teachers aren't focusing on the Constitution and schools aren't leaving room for it. As college students, we can't re-do our high school government classes, but we can make up for them by seeking knowledge for ourselves. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and at least take the time to read all 45 words of the First Amendment and figure out just what they mean for our own lives.
Ball State University's J-Ideas program took grand strides in helping us toward that goal Monday, with "Pardon the Constitutional Interruption." The organizers went all out to make the event interesting (complete with a time buzzer and fake powdered wig) and to present compelling arguments about the relevance and importance of the Constitution in our daily lives. Surprisingly, the lecture hall was full - with students even sitting in the aisles.
Now that Constitution Day is a national event, we encourage you to take every opportunity to not only celebrate the document but learn something new about it at least once every year.
If we don't respect our Constitutional rights, they could slip away in a generation - or less.
And in the future, students could be sitting in their history classes reading about the days when newspapers were printed without censorship and college students everywhere were free to say anything they wanted about the government.
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