Teach our children the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

(Letter to the editor of the Arizona Daily Star)
I feel compelled to write in response to your lengthy editorial in today’s Star entitled “Ethnic-studies defense group must be open”. I support your insistence that the Ethics Group clean up their act. Have any of your reporters checked into where the funding is coming from? If you did I am convinced you would realize that it is being supported by the organizations that were responsible for the Legislature passing House Bill 2281 in the first place. Check the La Raza web site as a good place to start.
Teaching Hispanic youths that the white founders of our country were evil and that white people today wish to hold them down is completely wrong. Whether America was wrong about taking the territory of New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California from Mexico is of no interest. There was a war and that was the result. The home is where families can discuss their heritage, not the schools. That goes for the children of all immigrant families whatever their race or creed.
What should be taught to all students before they reach High School is a full year curriculum about our Constitution and the men and women who placed their lives on the line to give us today the freedoms we still enjoy? That the men who wrote the words were white and wore powdered wigs does not detract from the fact that they forged the greatest government doctrine of all time, a doctrine some, I fear; believe to be outmoded and needing correction. Should it need to be improved there is a Constitutional process to accomplish that change.
I will be thankful should you be able to assure me that what I propose is already happening. Since my children have long ago attended High School I do not have information from them. I am convinced however from the attitude of students showing disrespect to speakers who do not mouth the words they want to hear, that the Constitution is not a part of all students curriculum.


Jack B. Walters
3961 N. Hillwood Circle
Tucson, AZ 85750
(520) 722-2958
September 22, 2010
jackbwalters@yahoo.com