is we lead by example. our politicians have to do the same thing. and so do the people in the media. we must not -- [ applause ] i think it's appalling that we have people on television regularly, every day, reporting the nation's events and the world's events who one, can't really properly use the english language. and two, don't seem to ever read books. it is not coincidental in my view that the strongest and most admirable periods have all been students. many have been the authors of

history. when george marshall was appointed the secretary of the state by harry truman, he was asked did you have a good education at vmi? he said no, i didn't. he said why not? because they taught no history. a leader has to know history. we have got to have leaders in the media. leaders in the press. leaders in institutions such as this. who take this cause to heart and do something about it. there is nothing wrong with the younger generation. they are terrific. any problems they have, any failings they have and what they know and don't know and how they use the english language is not their fault. it's our fault. we have got to hold the media

responsible. this turning of our political life and the future of the world into a sports event, it's all about who is ahead and who the polls are and the questions they ask of these. the yam. it's as if they are playing down to the lowest common denominator. we have the demand of more of them. >> we have two people at the microphone. in fact, we had three. please go ahead with your question. >> first, we would like to thank you. i am a public school elementary teacher here in the state of oklahoma. thank you for your kind words about what we do in the class room.

i would like to pick your minds, this esteemed panel. i teach in this state american history in the fifth grade. however my class and test does not count that we are not reading or mathematics. i fully believe i am the one helping to prepare my students to be citizens and to take care of me. what are your thoughts on what i should do as a professional and what i should do to make the constitution count in oklahoma? >> how to make the constitution

compelling for the students? >> that i can do. >> good. >> how do i encourage the powers to be in the state of oklahoma that american history and the elementary level should be counted or does that clarify my question? this is off the top of my head. i'm sorry. >> how can we persuade the powers that be that they have significance and should count? >> yes. >> well, are there legislators in the house right now? that's a wonderful thing. david is champing at the bit to answer it. >> one suggestion. to your question and also a follow-up to david's point about the media. could we generate media of our own? for example, in the state of

oklahoma, this institution find a way to recognize and to broadcast the successes that are happening in the classroom. to reward the teachers and the students by that kind of attention partly to educate our other leaders and also to encourage a sense of the possibilities of things that really are working in the classroom. >> if i understand your question correctly, one of the problems and this is everywhere, because of the emphasis on heading and math, they have pretty much not just pushed history to the back burner, but they put it off the stove. i think there is a very good solution to that. that is fine, stress math and reading. could we please when we think about reading something

worthwhile read the literature of history. head the second inaugural address and the letters from birmingham jail and the passages from the classic history that has been written about the country whether it's written in the last month or 100 years ago. let them discover not just the pull of history, but again, how these people and those moments can come back to life and convey with a powerful use of our language. i couldn't agree more about it has to be done early. if you want to get a child interested in the founting fath fathers, have them read ben and me about a mouse that lived in

ben franklin's hat. my first was historian when i was 6. he said of all the great ideas, they were not ben's. they were his. it's very well research and superbly written. i used it with my own children and grandchildren. it always works. these things work. generation after generation. always get them to read above their level. never ask them to read junk. boring tedious history. forget about memorizing dates. that's what books are for. you can look them up. >> thank you. >> i do have something i would like to say in response to that. some of my most satisfying teaching is with teachers and

teach american history programs and the bad news is all of these are out and they are in trouble. something like the american constitution center. this is all because we are too heavily taxed. it's about what it comes down to. i don't mean to be offensive. i know it's oklahoma, but if you want to invest, that's what it means. this doesn't come for nothing. >> howdy, guys. thank you very much for coming to the great university and diane for monitoring the discussion so beautifully. my question deals with the world. our constitution is our document. people in every country look at it and look too to. what are the challenges and the importance and opportunities of teaching the constitution at the university or university of

cairo or seoul, south korea versus teaching it here in our country. is it even important to do so and if any of you have experience doing so, what were the challenges and what were the surprises that you had? >> i will take it. it's a very interesting question. there has been a recent article suggesting that the american constitution lost influence abroad and no doubt the basic structure of our government, the separation of hours versus the parliamentary and the british system that we are not copied as much. it is extraordinary to look and see how much the constitution influenced the world. just the whole idea of a constitution. when you think about a constitution now, it's a written document. if iraq is going to have a constitution and afghanistan is, it's going to be a written document. that was our influence.

one thing we haven't mentioned that has been influential is the idea of a judiciary. other states including britain, they created a supreme court. they finally lifted a few members of the house out of the house of lowers and said you will be the supreme court. that has been in the last two years. so a bill of rights, other states in europe adopted bills of rights. independent judiciary and radification came out of american experience. even though the separation of powers that, is to say we do not allow members of the ministry, the cabinet to simultaneously hold off in the legislature. that is exactly what the british mandate, that system of separation and powers has not

been copied. all other respects, we have been influential around the world. >> i am glad to hear you say that. i said something in a similar in a blog post on the national constitution center website in response to a very interesting article in the "new york times" in which he suggested that the rest of the world was really not following the american model and really the headline is the rest of the world is democratic with the bill of rights and judicial reviews. the other things are smaller of institutional detail and the presidentialist model of a separate executive has worked particularly poorly in south america. it's led to a sense of gridlock

and controlled by one group. the pedestrian by a different party and a perception that things don't get done. they start to try to govern by executive decrew. this led in south america to seeing a possible pathologist with divided government and being attempted to do things by executive order. there was an interesting question. it's not just true of the u.s. constitution. it's true of 50 state constitutions. governors are elected departmentally. it is the american model. >> there is another dimension of constitutionalism that seems increasingly relevant and that is federalism. we have a deeply conflicted

feeling about our own federal history, but the fact is that europe is on the edge of failure and they are going to fall apart. that could have global implications of disastrous skprd that is built into the system and the system of burden sharing and transfer of payments. we could handle things that the world will need to handle on an increasingly large scale. >> isn't there another issue there? i heard the governor jerry brown in sell say the other day that if the legislature won't agree to something, it goes to the people. the people can create a referendum and decide that way. it is truly taking the government or the governing of

that state to the people. how does that fit in to the larger picture? >> i think this kind of direct democracy is probably a little dangerous. i represent the system that worked very well, but there increasing uses of this kind of thing that came out of the progressive era which was a period in which politics seemed to be dead. i think it's similar to our own time that the inequalities of wealth were enormous and a lot of reforms were passed that led to the use of the ballot initiativ initiatives. we don't really want to go down that path. i know colorado is suffering from this. they are all over the place. they are having referendums to

repeal previous referendums and it comes a very dangerous situation. there is the possibility technically within the half century or shorter where we as a people could vote on the budget. you could see every april 15th, the people will have internet connection and decide yes or no on the budget. this is possible. whether it's the best way to run a democracy with 300 plus million is problematic. >> i think we have time for one last question, sir. >> hello, everybody. sorry for the interruption and the interaction on the phone. i was a teenager when the franklin roosevelt's new deal

got started. early on, a bunch of new deal legislation got slammed down by the supreme court. franklin roosevelt's solution was to pack the courts. let's get more people on the court. then we will get the majority in favor of the new deal. another challenge is the war in court and more recently the united citizens have corporations and no limits on campaign contributions so that the super pacs sometimes outpace

the regular campaign money and my point is that if i were teaching the constitution, i would think it very important historically to come against and explain and discuss those points where the constitution was really challenged. part of that would be the drama to getting a new amendment. and so i think the students would get excited about the challenges. >> thank you. >> i liked rosy's suggestion

that we could ask student what is they think about a constitutional convention. i have gone around to classrooms as young as first graders and one question i asked is a jefferson-like question. what do you think should be in the constitution that isn't or forget even a convention across the board. i have got to tell you that i learned some amazing things from first graders. i remember once i went and i said what would you put in the constitution? a first grader said no drugs. >> no what? >> no drugs. i thought about it and i said good idea, drugs are very bad and your life is going to be a lot better and then i thought we did have this with prohibition

and it didn't work. that was the first time in my life that i began to think maybe it's possible that this war on drugs won't end so well. i am saying asking kids, young people something like what -- a lot of them said era and we talked about that and these are first graders and third and fifth graders. >> i would like to add something off this topic about resources for studying the constitution. some of you may know about the documentary history and the ratification of the constitution which say wonderful project being done at madison, wisconsin. the documentary edition is now available online with other papers of the founders.

so that those -- we had these wonderful editorial editions that nobody ever looked looked. they are now available. they're getting wonderful use, and for advanced high school and college students, you can now look at the ratification debates. you can do word searches. you can read them. they're not just available at university libraries. now the strip down edition thanks to the mellen grant is available universally. and the documentary, with all the documentary materials, you can get it through libraries that have rights to do so. but it's a wonderful and democratic move in terms of information availability and accessibility. it's very empowering for future generations of students and hi hope for future generation of legislators reflecting on our history. >> could i just add to that? this documentary collection which is now almost 125 volumes

of debates over democracy, in all the issues of liberty, representation, federalism, all of these issues debated. and it's the greatest collection of debates on these issues of democracy in the history of the world. now it may be that fifth century greeks had a richer debate. but we don't know about it. maybe 17th century england had a really rich debate. we only know a fragment of what went on. here we have 25 volumes of ordinary people in these ratification conventions debating these fundamental issues of how much government should we have. how much liberty? how much representation? what does representation mean? all of these basic issues. and it's all now, as peter says, available online. it's an extraordinary collection.

>> well, thank all of you so much. [ applause ] next a look at the recent visit to little rock, arkansas, a look at the city's rich history and literary culture. you're watching american history tv all weekend on c-span3. the historic arkansas museum is in downtown little rock. it encompasses five houses situated on the original foundations. the houses are used to interpret the lives of 19th century urban slaves and slave owners. >> this is the brownlee house. built by robert brownlee for his brother james and james' wife isabelle.

they did have two slaves. this is the slave that would have spent her time caring for the house where we are now is the bedroom. this is typical of a middle class bedroom. thgs this is dated 1848 to 1852. we know she did needle work. so we have placed items in here that she might have used working with yarn. miss brownlee is isabelle brownlee, who married james when she was about 14. she came here when she was about 16 years old. so she was a young bride. she was away from home, far, far away from home, and was hoim sick and very unhappy and she was a bit sickly as well. so robert brownlee speaks of tabby, her slave, very briefly in his memoir.

he says isabelle took her passions out on tabby. we don't know what that means, except she was treated badly and robert brownlee noticed it. we are walking through the breezeway. in the summer this is the coolest part of the house. we open both doors, and most of the family's time would be spent out here. they might take the dining room table and bring it out here to have their meals. this is the parlor. this is where if mrs. brownlee would be inclined to do entertaining, this where she would have done it. isabelle brownlee was taken from her home when she was so young. she came to arkansas when she was still a teenager and had not been married to james brownlee for very long. they arrive in 1848, and they left in 1852. the house was sold in 1852.

isabelle felt isolated here, and she returned to scotland while her husband james went to california. a few yards away is where she would have had her own bedroom, and would have done most of her work for the family. this is where she would have her own bedroom and would have done most of her work for the family. she was responsible for the laundry. she would have been responsible for cooking all of the meals. she would have tended the garden. she was the only slave of the brownlee family, so she would have been responsible for maintaining the household all together. >> this is the work area of the kitchen. everything in here is actually reproduction, although it's authentic 1840s, 1850s furniture.

a typical day is getting up in the morning and begins cooking a morning meal. her cooking of the big meal of the day typically would be done by noon or 1:00. in the afternoon she would work on perhaps repairing clothing, making clothing, cleaning, things like that. generally the cooking was done for the hot part of the day. ladies of the house typically worked i long side their slaves, depending on what the work was to be done. polishing silver. often cooking might be downright alongside the slaves. since she was the only slave, isabelle probably worked alongside her doing most of the tasks that needed to be done. the ashley family was unusual. they lived near here and made an

effort to keep the families. that was certainly not typical here. the talk of the town was that if you were a slave, you would want to be a slave of the ashley family. the ashley family gave their slaves a little more autonomy than some of the other slaves in town would have had. they were many more of them, so their duties were more specific. they were to come and go not as they pleased, but as needed to take care of the things done in the household, this was true for tabby, also. so as you're cooking, your tasks might include going to the market to buy more food which would have been on an account by the family at the store. slaves in general in town had more autonomy than slaves on plantations did. so in that respect, the ashley family was not that unusual. but the ashley family was known

to be kinder to their slaves than isabelle likely was to tabby. this is tabby's bedroom area. this would have been pretty much her own space. right here, what we have set up is somewhere for her to hang her laundry in case of rain. it looks like it might rain today, so her laundry she will hang to dry on these bamboo poles here. this is her bed and it's like a murphy bed. it will fold up against the wall. in case tabby needed more room here. she has her own fireplace that she probably would have kept lit most of the time. and we do have some things that she might have had, little boxes for anything that she wanted to keep things in. there were a lot of slaves in the area who aspired to learn to read, especially after learning that the ashley place, almost all of them were literate. so tabby probably was one of the

slaves who would have attended one of williams wallace andrews' prayer meetings. william wallace andrews was one of the ashley slaves, and he was a minister, and he would conduct prayer meetings at his hope. and during the course of those prayer meetings, he taught the attendees to actually read the words in the bible. i think tabby probably was one of those slaves who would have gone to one of those prayer meetings. i was very surprised by the autonomy the slaves were given, how they were not just permitted, but required to come and go without constant permission from the slave master. there were things that they were expected to take care of during the day and in the course of that, you were required to go to the market. you were required to go to the river to meet a shipment. you were expected to do that and you didn't have to have a pass to do so. as the slaves on plantations did. slaves on plantations had to