According to a report by the Digital Journal, sixth-grade students in the public Bryant School District in Arkansas were assigned a project to update the “outdated” Bill of Rights. They were directed to “prioritize, revise, omit two and add two amendments.” Lela Spears, the outraged mother of a girl who received the assignment, said that her daughter received these direction in her history class and that it was the first assignment of that class dealing with the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
“After she brought it home and explained her assignment to me, it made me question exactly what she was being taught,” Spears said. “When I asked my child what the assignment was to teach her she had no idea, only that she was told to do it. She didn’t even understand what the amendments meant.”
The assignment begins with the hypothetical situation that the government is revisiting the Bill of Rights and have determined it’s “outdated in its current form.” With the desire to “ensure that our personal civil liberties and the pursuit of happiness remains guarded in the 21st century” the government has tasked the students who, per the project, are experts on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Here is the assignment in full as provided by Lela Spears:
Spears reported that her daughter was never taught in school how the Constitution is actually amended.