A public university is openly resisting a state law requiring graduates to finish their education with classroom lessons about America’s historic founding documents.
South Carolina has required students to learn about the U.S. Constitution and other important documents since 1924, but the University of South Carolina has knowingly ignored the requirement and is criticizing an updated law introduced by state Sen. Lawrence Grooms.
Education watchdog Campus Reform reports a USC spokesman admitted to state legislators the university has never complied with the law and complained in particular about the required exam required for the course. The CR story also noted the university offers credit for courses such as “Global Citizenship and Multicultural Understanding.”
"I guess I'd call it an anti-civics,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, tells OneNewsNow. “It teaches that your own country is obsolete at best and at worst it's a peverse and terrible place."
In addition to learning about the U.S. Constitution, the course requires students to study The Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence.
A classroom study of the key documents presumably helps students understand the unique legal and moral vision for the United States, beginning with delegates who publicly declared that their freedom comes from our Creator, not from King George.
James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton would go on to pen more than 80 essays, collectively known as The Federalist Papers, which stirred public debate in preparation for ratifying a future constitution.
Wood says many students are graduating high school without demonstrating they learned a lot. “So it's not just the quality of the material,” he says, “but whether the students who matriculate into a college are getting it at all.”
The new, updated legislation passed the Senate but is expected to be introduced in the House in 2020.
