An Experience with Writing Our Own Constitution
Have you ever thought how difficult it would be to write a whole set of rules that an entire country would have to follow? Especially in a small time period? Whether it is 40 days with 55 men participating, or 4 8th graders in 4 days, it is still a difficult task.
When we were writing our rules, we had independence and freedom on our minds. We wanted all the citizens of our new nation to have the rights and equality they deserve. The representatives were all gathered together to write the constitution so that all the people of the united States could have equal rights. They didn’t want anyone to have a better ‘living option’ than anyone else. My group and I wanted the same thing for our country. No one would have more allowing rules than anyone else. I think that this is a similarity because both groups of people were thinking about the citizens of the new nations.
There were many more writers writing the United States Constitution compared to the number of people writing our rules for the country we ‘crashed’ on. There were 50 delegates made up of men from 12 of the original 13 states. 39 of the 55 delegates signed the final Constitution. We had 4 people writing our final set of rules. It was, probably, a lot easier with less people. There were a lot more people writing the United States Constitution because there were more people to represent in the 13 states.
Both my group and the writers of the Constitution had the rule that all citizens were allowed to free speech and practice of religion. When the U.S. was made free, there were all sorts of different people of different religions and races. It wouldn’t be to fair if the people of the new Independent country would not be able to practice their own religion with their new independence. It would be the same with the people with our rules. There are people fro Earth who have come to our new planet and if we didn’t allow them to have the rights they had back home, they would have to give up all they had and were used to. This is an important rule because it puts independence into one big rule.
In our rules, we had that the government provide shelter with no money. This probably wasn’t a rule in the United States Constitution but there were a lot more people living in the U.S. at the time. If the government tried to give all the people with no money, homes, then the government would have less money than the people. With our new country, we wouldn’t have as many people. Also, there aren’t any home stores on our new planet. There were places to get supplies in the U.S. This would be a difficult rule if you were somewhere with a lot of people.
Whether you are writing a document as big as the United States Constitution, or a group of rules for a Social Studies project, coming up with laws that a brand new country is really hard. Luckily, my group had the Constitution to build off of, the writers had to do it all from scratch. I definitely give them all a pat on the back because that is some hard, hard work.
