Community School District 20

415 89th Street
Brooklyn, New York 11209
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About the CSD 20 Project:

a three-year professional development program in American constitutional history for middle school and high school teachers of social studies and history from the following New York City's Region 7 schools : P.S. 104, P.S. 95, P.S. 121, P.S. 226, I.S. 30, I.S. 201, I.S. 62, IS. 187, I.S. 220, I.S. 223, I.S. 227, I.S. 250, I.S. 02, I.S. 34, I.S. 24, I.S. 72, I.S. 51, I.S. 61, New Utecht H.S., Fort Hamilton H.S., H.S. of Telecommunications, Tottenville H.S., Port Richmond H.S., Susan Wagner H.S. and Curtis H.S.

The project is sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, the National Association of Scholars, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in partnership with Region 7 of the New York City Department of Education. The primary focus of the Seminar is the substantive study of the philosophical foundations of the Constitution, the construction of the Constitution, the constitutional crisis of the American Civil War, and 20th and 21st century struggles over the application and interpretation of the Constitution. Historical subject matter is systematically related to pedagogical process.

The core of each year's study is a two-week, eight-day seminar on the campus of Princeton University. The summer seminar is led by university-based scholars and is joined by experienced pedagogues with pre-collegiate teaching experience. Each year's program includes a total of three half-day meetings during the immediately preceding and succeeding academic semesters.

  • All participants will receive a stipend of $2,375 for full attendance at the summer seminar and the three half-day professional development meetings.
  • Free room and board will be provided to participants who wish a complete residential experience at Princeton University during the summer seminar. Residence is optional. (Please note: Room and board at the University is on a first come, first served basis as the number of available accommodations is limited)
  • New Jersey professional development credit equal to a course equivalent may be earned by participants in each summer seminar. All participants in the James Madison Seminar are eligible (enrollment optional) to receive three graduate credits from the College of Education at Ashland University in Ohio for their participation in the Summer Seminar. The total cost of tuition for graduate credits is $747.
  • Teachers who participate in the first year of the program are especially encouraged to apply for the Seminar's two succeeding years. Teachers who do not participate in the first year are eligible to apply in succeeding years on a space-available basis.

The seminar is a rigorous graduate level experience in constitutional and cultural history. All seminar readings will be provided and introduced to participants in the spring preceding each summer seminar, thus insuring that all teachers will have sufficient time to complete all required readings.

The summer seminar and half-day meetings will be organized and assisted by the project's co-directors, Dr. Bradford Wilson, Associate Director of The James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions at Princeton University, and Dr. Adam Scrupski, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers Graduate School of Education.


August 5th - 9th, 13th - 16th, 2007

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION:
ITS CONSTRUCTION, RATIFICATION, & EARLY IMPLEMENTATION

"Self-interest . . . turns private interest against itself . . . and if it does not lead the will directly to virtue, it establishes habits that lead that way."


-- Alexis de Tocqueville,
on the Amercian Ethos

Colonial life and institutions under the British Crown will be examined, including factors implicated in the American Revolution. An examination of the experience with the Articles of Confederation will lead to a focus on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the ideas, conflicts, and compromises that shaped it. The devotion of the ancient republics to public virtue will be contrasted with the American republic's novel foundation in individual rights and the politics of self-interest (James Madison's "new science of politics"). The relationship between these two phenomena, virtue and self-interest, will be the principal focus of the entire study.

Topical Organization
  • The Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution
  • The Crisis of the Confederation and the Federal Convention of 1787
  • The Anti-Federalist / Federalist Debate: Granting and Limiting Powers,Separation of Powers, the Bill of Rights
  • Constitutional Controversy and Development in the Early National Period:Federalist and Republican Politics and Perspectives: 1789-1803


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Summer 2008

THE SECESSION CRISIS:
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR & ITS AFTERMATH

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."


-- Abraham Lincoln,
1858

The institution of slavery and the resolution of its potential for American societal destruction will be the subject of the second year's seminar. The 2008 seminar will examine the nullification crisis of the 1830's within the context of ongoing debates over the relationship between states' rights and national sovereignty. The congressional balance between slave and free states amid the addition of new territory will be addressed in the context of the growth and acceleration of the anti-slavery movement. Innumerable divisions between north and south will be examined in terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1824, the Compromise of 1850, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, the formation of the new Republican Party, and the Dred Scott decision. We'll examine Abraham Lincoln's argument that the institution of slavery was rooted in the false notion that there is no standard of morality that transcended self-interest. We shall also address the challenge and difficulties of post-Civil War reunion and Reconstruction, and the changes in the Constitution and the self-understanding of the American republic they produced.

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Summer 2009

THE CONSTITUTION AND ORDERED LIBERTY

"The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this includes the right to purchase and sell labor, except as controlled by the State in the legitimate exercise of its police power. Liberty of contract relating to labor includes both parties to it; the one has as much right to purchase as the other to sell labor."


-- Majority opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Lochner v. New York (1905)

"This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. The 14th Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics."


-- Justice Holmes, dissenting in Lochner

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."


-- Majority opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), upholding the abortion right

"If the passage calls into question the government's power to regulate actions based on one's self-defined 'concept of existence, etc.,' it is the passage that ate the rule of law."


-- Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting in Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

The 2009 seminar will explore the transformation of Americans' understanding of constitutional liberty since the Civil War. The late 19th century United States gave strong legal protection to entrepreneurial liberty and property rights, and allowed a great deal of legal restraint, particularly at the state and local level, in cultural and moral affairs. Today, we tolerate a great deal more economic regulation, and give more constitutional protection to moral, personal, and, especially, sexual autonomy and self-expression. The seminar will look at four broad epochs: the late nineteenth century "laissez-faire" period, the progressive era, the New Deal, and the cultural revolution that began in the 1960s. Readings will focus on Supreme Court decisions, political and cultural documents, and culturally polarizing issues.

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