Fire and Knowledge

Experiment and the scientific method can be taught in many matters other than science…. Want the students to understand the Constitution of the United States? You could have them read it, Article by Article, and then discuss it in class—but, sadly, this will put most of them to sleep.

Or you could try the [Daniel] Kunitz method: You forbid the students to read the Constitution. Instead, you assign them, two for each state, to attend a Constitutional Convention. You brief each of the thirteen teams in detail on the particular interests of their state and region. The South Carolina delegation, say, would be told the primacy of cotton, the necessity and morality of the slave trade; the danger posed by the industrial North, and so on. The thirteen delegations assemble, and with a little faculty guidance, but mainly on their own, over some weeks write a constitution. Then they read the Constitution. The students have reserved war-making powers to the President. The delegates of 1787 assigned them to Congress. Why? The students have freed the slaves. The original Constitutional Convention did not. Why?

This takes more preparation by the teachers and more work by the students, but the experience is unforgettable. It’s hard not to think that the nations of the Earth would be in better shape if every citizen went through a comparable experience.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (Ballantine Books: 1995), pp. 326-327.