In this year of the Bicentennial of the Constitution, the Pennsylvania Humanities Council (a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities) will create two newspaper supplements that describe the story of the Constitution to over two-million readers in the Commonwealth. The supplements will be printed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as forty-page, four-color magazines, and then reproduced in sixteen-page versions by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and reprinted by regional newspapers across the state. The supplements will contain writing by some of the nation’s preeminent historians and political scientists. The newly formed National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia will attempt to distribute the supplements nationally.
This venture is an exercise in public education using a means that is classic in a democracy-the newspapers. It mobilizes the resources of the academic com munity in the service of public education, which is the basic aim of the state humanities councils. And it illustrates how these councils are taking an active role in public humanities programming, as opposed to their traditional role of merely serving as dispensers of federal funds within their states.
Indeed, state humanities councils are increasingly taking such an active role, devising their own programs and raising funds for them from the private sector. In the case of the newspaper supplements, initial funding for the development of the supplements and their publication in Philadelphia has come from the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, one of the Glenmede foundations. Additional funds are presently being sought from other Pennsylvania foundations for printing of the supplements outside Philadelphia. The National Constitution Center, for its part, is also seeking funds for the national distribution of the supplements.
The idea of the supplements arose from the fact that many citizens of the United States, including those who have graduated from the school system and even from colleges and graduate schools, know very little about the constitutional government under which they live. At the same time, Americans frequently make assertions that on thing or the other is “unconstitutional” or that “rights” are involved in an issue. The Bicentennial provides an occasion to reintroduce American citizens to their system of government, and makes them, as it were, the readers whom the Constitution writers wanted: citizens schooled in the ways of representative government, who can ensure its continuance. The Bicentennial thus poses a special challenge to bring to the public knowledge of the Constitution, including an understanding of its meaning, history, and influence on the development of our society and of other countries.
The first supplement will contain the texts of the Preamble of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, an introductory essay by former Chief Justice War ren Burger, and eleven essays. The authors chosen for the supplement have been selected for their ability to present their special insights to the general public in a cogent, accessible way. The essayists and their topics are:
- “The Historical Background of the Constitution” by Jack P. Greene of the Johns Hopkins University;
- “The Philosophical Background of the Constitution” by Gordon Wood of Brown University;
- “The State of the Nation under the Articles of Confederation and the Principal Figures of the Convention” by Christopher Collier, the University of Connecticut;
- “The Principal Issues and Compromises at the Convention” by Richard B. Morris, Columbia University;
- “The Final Provisions of the Constitution” by Henry Steele Commager, Amherst College;
- “The Ratification Process” by Robert Allen Rutland, the University of Virginia;
- “The Federalist Papers” by Garry Wills, Northwestern University;
- “The Anti-Federalists” by Lance Banning, the University of Kentucky;
- “The Bill of Rights” by Leonard W. Levy, the Claremont Graduate School;
- “Philadelphia and the Constitution: The First National City” by E. Digby Baltzell, the University of Pennsylvania.
The second supplement will take the story of the Constitution into the present, containing articles on constitutional change, “Corporations and the Public Trust,” the inclusion of groups excluded from the Constitution in 1787, labor and management issues, federalism, war powers, issues raised by technological change, and “The Constitution and the Criminal Law System.” This issue will also contain brief inserts on issues, cases, and personalities concerned with the topics of the essays.
The use of the newspapers to carry historical material radically increases the number of people who might be exposed to the writings of the essayists. Consider the fact that a professor might teach 100 students a year for thirty years, for perhaps a total of 3,000 students. Consider that he or she might reach 5,000 people with a book and even with a prolific career of ten books, a total of 50,000. The supplements de signed here will reach a minimum of two million people, and with national distribution, perhaps several times that number.
Of course, the experiences of taking a course, reading a monograph, and reading a newspaper supplement are not comparable, but the possibility of influencing a wider public should tempt academics to seek opportunities, such as are presented in this project, to reach beyond their accustomed circles of students and specialized readers to the larger American public. Perhaps only such an effort can secure the literate population which a democracy such as ours requires for its survival.
Craig Eisendrath holds his PhD in the history of American Civilization from Harvard and assumed his present duties as executive director of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council in 1980.
