Civic Literacy Workshop Summary: Understanding the U.S. Constitution and Government

hello welcome to our civic literacy workshop number one at florida atlantic

university my name is jennifer bieber gal i'm the associate dean for retention and academic support here at fau

and i have prepared these workshops to help prepare you for one of your graduation requirements the civic

literacy exam so we're going to go ahead and get started this is workshop number one the

us constitution and the founding of our country it's a focus on history and government

so we're going to cover in this workshop the civic literacy requirement and the

prep and you'll take a short practice test then we'll get into the basics of u.s

history we'll start from when the colonists came to the to the united states why they came here why they

declared their independence the creation of the constitution and the amendments there's a heavy emphasis on the civic

literacy exam on the constitution and the amendment so we'll spend quite a bit of time on that

and then we're going to cover some other areas related to history so a little bit we'll touch on the wars

uh the presidents other key figures that you would need to know then the latter half of this workshop will focus on

basic concepts of government so the three branches of government what each branch is responsible for

the balance between state and federal government the powers of each separation of

powers and the concept of federalism then we'll review the practice test see

how you did and how you would do now after you've received this information and then we're going to talk about

future workshops and some testing reminders so again this is the first workshop there are two additional

workshops workshop number two focuses on 22 landmark supreme court cases that are also heavily emphasized on the civic

literacy test and the third workshop is a practice test for the exam we go over some games some kahoots to help you

learn the information basically a review session so what is the civic literacy

requirement so the civic literacy requirement was passed by the florida florida legislature in 2018 and it

requires that all students since fall of 2018 uh in order to receive any degree associates or bachelor's degree from a

florida state college or state university they're required to demonstrate proficiency in civic

literacy so you can do that through several different ways there are courses you can complete to meet that

while you were in high school you could have passed a couple of different ap tests to satisfy that however if you're

here chances are you haven't done either of those and you don't intend to take the government of the us or the u.s

history course that can satisfy this so the civic literacy test is the quickest easiest and cheapest way in fact it's

completely free to satisfy this requirement so the civic literacy test and i will show you at the end of this

workshop how to sign up it is offered through the fau office testing and evaluation it is completely free to take

the test on campus you just sign up go to the testing center it is offered every day that the university is open

monday through friday typically every hour between nine and two

you have two hours to take the exam but most students finish it in well under an hour

the exam is 100 multiple choice questions there is no penalty for guessing and you only need to get 60

correct worst case if you don't pass it on your first attempt you can take it again as

soon as you are ready and it is no charge to take it again so out of a hundred questions to earn 60

clearly you only need to get 60 of the questions right um and it doesn't matter what you score

a 60 is just as good as a 98 on that test it doesn't show on your transcript that you scored a certain score it just

shows the civic literacy requirement has been met so we're going to start off today

finding out what you already know we do have a practice test available to you online

and i'm going to switch over to the doc cam

so what i'm going to do in a moment is going to ask you to stop the recording we will pause and for

you to go on to the canvas site and download the practice test it is about 20 questions

you may see about 31 questions on yours you can answer all 31 of them or just go through

the first 20. once you complete that um then you can unpause the video and continue when you

take the test i would like to encourage you to put a star next to the ones you feel really confident about like if i

took the test right now i know that i got the right answer on this and then the questions you're not quite sure

about put a question mark next to and hopefully by the end of this workshop those question marks will turn into

stars so you can go ahead and pause this video now download and take your quiz and then

restart when you are ready okay welcome back so how did you do

it's okay if you didn't know a lot of them because again that's why you're taking this to this

course this workshop so we're going to start again with the basics of u.s history so everything from

the founding of the united states from the colonists coming from great britain declaring their independence from great

britain the original constitution maybe you remember what that was called and then

the u.s constitution which we know of today and for last over 200 years the amendments

of those of the us constitution and the first ten amendments which are called hopefully you know the bill of rights

and then a little bit of how the constitution set up the structure of government although the structure of

government will be the second part of this workshop and then we'll go over some other things that are in the study

guides for this workshop that you may see a few questions on things like presidents political parties wars key

figures and how we grew the united states from the original colonies to the 50 states we have today

so as we get started i'm going to tell you which questions you probably want to put the most emphasis on studying or the

concepts you want to emphasize studying and those that you might not put as much time if you don't remember because you

might only see one or two questions so if you get a question on the civic literacy test and you're not sure of the

answer hopefully through process of elimination you can narrow it narrow down some of the incorrect choices and

have a good chance of guessing the right answer but don't get too hung up if you don't know something you have 99 other

questions that you can hopefully get it right so one question you're likely to find

is about the colonial period and the 13 original colonies so again there were 13 original colonies in the 1600s groups of

people came from great britain to the new land and they established these 13 colonies if you don't remember them you

may not spend too much time studying this but the original 13 colonies are listed on your screen here

you also should have and if you haven't done that you can pause us now and download the powerpoint you may want to

even print that out so you can take notes alongside um and study right along while we're going through this through

this presentation the powerpoint that you see here is available for you on the canvas site in my in the first module

um so there are 13 original colonies they pretty much formed along the eastern seaboard of what is now the

united states makes sense right the boats came over from great britain they landed and they established along the

water water also made it easier for travel and for trade so if you're asked a question usually it's

which of the following were not colonies or all of the following were original colonies

except and you would find the one that is not correct so remember there are three colonies that started with new new

hampshire new york and new jersey there is only one of the colonies that had a v in it and

that is virginia so if you see west virginia you know that can't be right if you see vermont you know that can't be

right so the colonies stretched as far north as new hampshire which means vermont and

maine were not original colonies it went from new hampshire all the way down the southern coast through to georgia

florida was not part of the original colonies neither was alabama but these are the colonies to know so many of them

you probably heard about in your history classes if you took us history at any point during your education so things

like state colonies that are now states like massachusetts rhode island connecticut pennsylvania virginia were

big colonies that had a lot to do with the forming of the united states so why did the colonists come to america

so there are three main reasons that you should remember and again you are often asked this as a question that might say

colonists came to america for all of the following except so that the reasons that would be

correct that are reasons they did come to the united states religious freedom was a main one so if you think about

what was happening in europe in the 1600s many of the countries in europe had

state religions or religion for their country to live in that country who had to practice and follow the religion that

was established and they wanted religious freedom and that is one of the key founding principles of the united

states they also wanted to escape persecution whether it was for their religious beliefs their political

beliefs and to find new economic opportunities in the new world so you may see a question about the mate

that includes the mayflower compact they might be asking about original forms of government so when the colonists came to

america they created this mayflower compact to try to create some kind of self-government but it didn't really

hold a tremendous amount of water because they were still bound to the rules uh of the mother country in great

britain so that is part of what then led the colonists to want to declare their

independence so after about a hundred years of british role in the new world

the colonists started to be upset they said you know here we are an ocean away and we're still bound by rules of people

they're taxing us we don't have representation you might have remembered the boston tea party right the big cry

no taxation without representation that was one of the main reasons we declared independence so you don't want to

confuse why we came to the colonies versus why we declared independence from great britain so we

declared our independence for great britain for different reasons we came to the colonies for religious freedom to

escape persecution for economic opportunity but then we declared our independence for reasons like

trying to not be taxed without representation our voice isn't heard how can you determine how to tax us

also they had something called quartering quartering is a concept you want to remember because when we go

through the amendments the third amendment prohibits quartering so your quarters if you think of quarters it is

your home right you stay in your quarters so back in this time um when the british soldiers came to the states

usually to protect the citizens here in the colonies but sometimes to keep order they didn't have holiday inn or marriott

they didn't have army barracks so many of them would stay in the homes of the colonists

and i don't know about you but i wouldn't really feel good if all of a sudden i got a knock on my door and was

forced without my um decision to house the uh the british soldiers so that was

called quartering so we did not want so we did we wanted to break from british role because of taxation without

representation quartering of soldiers and we wanted our own self-government why are we under british rule when we're

an ocean away we wanted to create our own government so not everyone believed what was going

on they didn't not everyone felt that we should break from british rule so one of the things that you should know is

common sense by thomas payne it was actually pamphlets that thomas paine wrote and distributed trying to convince

the colonists to declare independence and break from british role in a little while when we're talking about ratifying

the constitution we'll talk about another set of papers that was written to try to get by in to ratify the

constitution and we'll come back to common sense by thomas paine okay so we weren't happy because we

didn't like quartering soldiers we didn't like being taxed without representation and we

wanted self-government so we were convinced that we are going to go ahead and declare our independence so

hopefully you know independence day in the united states is celebrated on july 4th so in july 4th 1776 when the second

continental congress was meeting they they voted to accept this declaration of independence

which announced our independence from great britain so the declaration of independence has

some ideas about the american system of government that we wanted to create so you may know some of this language it

might sound familiar to this so in the declaration of independence we'll find some language such as we hold these

truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal they have certain unalienable rights

which are endowed by their creator so let's look talk really quickly about some of those concepts

so when we talk about all men being created equal remember this is 1776. they probably meant white males right

they didn't mean all men but the concept was that we're breaking from what we saw in britain which was a monarchy that

people were born into certain social classes and here we're saying all people are born into this equal system that

anyone can become a leader in our country don't have to be born into it these are unalienable rights endowed by

our creator by their creator so they're given to us by that overpowering being which i find it interesting we wanted

religious freedom but endowed by their creator i think implies some kind of religious belief in there that there is

a higher being um but they are given to each of us at birth these are unalienable rights no one can take away

from us so these were some of the concepts that we would find in our declaration of

independence um the declaration of independence also stated that all people have a right to

life liberty and pursuit of happiness so that was one of the quiz questions maybe you got right and i find that really a

great concept that our founding fathers thought it was so important that certainly it makes sense that we have

life and liberty but that our happiness was just as important to be uh in such a seminal document

so the declaration of independence was signed on july 4 1776 the main author was thomas jefferson but it was signed

by 55 men um the one that you might recognize is john hancock his signature was a large hancock on was a large

signature on the declaration of independence and you may hear it referred to um when someone asks for

your signature give me your john hancock that's because his signature was so easily recognized

so now we've declared our independence we fought in the revolutionary war we won

we declared independence from great britain now what are we going to do we had these colonists and they had to set

up some kind of self-government we no longer have british rule what is our government structure going to look like

so they've established they established these articles of confederation this was our original plan for government in the

united states and it looked at all the things that we didn't want to be like great britain so

they were so afraid of uh having too much federal power too much power in one body that they gave very little control

to the federal government and left a lot of the power to the states

well unfortunately this weak central government didn't really work it was hard to build a nation when there was

nothing holding it together so it really failed

so after about 10 years later we declared independence in 1776 and in 1989 or sorry 1789

we had our u.s constitution so the u.s constitution basically they looked at the articles of confederation

and it's kind of like when you write a rough draft of a paper sometimes you can make edits to improve that paper and

other times you say i'm going to crumple that paper up throw it away or in modern times just hit delete or new document

and start over from scratch and that's what they decided to do they really got rid of the article's confederation and

built an entirely new document as the us constitution the u.s constitution has been standing since 1789 so it's over

230 years old and it is called the supreme law of the land if you see a test question asking about the supreme

law of the land you know they are referring to the u.s constitution so it was written in 1787 and in 1789 it was

ratified which means it was accepted and voted on and passed by this the states as the supreme law of the land it

establishes what we call a representative democracy so we are a democracy which means people vote and

make decisions and it is representative you may see a question that asks you which part of our government is the

closest illustration of representative democracy and they'd be talking about the areas of government the branches of

government being the executive the judicial and then the two houses of congress senate and the house of

representatives the house of representatives is the most representative part of our democracy

because they are most closely related right we we would vote for two senators from the entire state of florida but in

palm beach county we have several representatives just for our area alone so when they created the constitution it

was listing some rights of all citizens and the constitution an important thing to know is it protects the rights of all

citizens and people living in the united states so that includes someone who might have

a green card illegal aliens or undocumented citizens if you live in the united states you are protected by the

constitution so the in addition to the representative democracy we set up and defined a

federalist government so the concept of federalism comes up on the civic literacy test pretty often federalism

means a balance of powers it is a balance between state and federal rights so if you

remember when we established the first constitution which was called the articles of confederation the

articles of confederation gave all of the power to the states and that didn't work but we were afraid of giving too

much power to the federal government because we didn't want to have a type of government like we had in great britain

so how are we going to get that balance and it's the concept called federalism so federalism is that balance of state

and national power state and federal power um

another thing that you should be familiar with that will is most likely going to show up on your civic literacy

test is they might ask a question what words in the constitution set up this concept of self-government

and that is we the people we the people the first three words in the preamble of our constitution is basically saying

we are giving you permission we the people of these united states are

saying this is the government that we want this is the government that we have

selected so that's almost always a concept that's asked about on the civic literacy test

so when they wrote the constitution um they wrote that this is a country a government of laws

and not of men and no person or group is above the law it means that everyone everyone in these united states must

follow the law there is no person or position in the land that is not bound by these laws and you can imagine which

position in the united states might people might feel that they might be above the law

in fact uh when i'm recording this video in 2020 i don't know how long this video will be around but this phrase has been

used quite frequently in our congress in the past few months as nancy

pelosi who is our current speaker of the house and some other congress people are talking about

um the impeachment hearings for president donald trump and saying that no one is

above the law and trump has to follow the president has to follow the law of the land

when you get to workshop two you will see there is one of the 22 cases is u.s versus nixon which talks about when

nixon was president and he felt that he was above the law and they came out and said no one is above the law that is

called the rule of law so if you see on your civic literacy test a question about what is the rule of law it simply

states no one is above the law everyone must follow the law okay so when we talked about earlier

when we were declaring our independence we said that there were some pamphlets written

hopefully you remember what that pamphlet was called and who the author was

so we're going to talk about another writing now the original writing that was to help convince the people to

declare independence from great britain was common sense by thomas paine now we're talking about the federalist

papers so the federalist papers were trying to convince the ratification or acceptance of the u.s constitution

so this was a series of 85 essays written to support passing the u.s constitution

they were primary primarily written by alexander hamilton with james madison and john jay they were written under a

pen name which is pluvius and they were published in new york papers to get the people in new york to agree to uh ratify

the constitution so very famous set of writings that talked about why we should have this type of government so remember

that concept of federalism is that balance that there were some powers that the state has and some powers the

federal government has so neither one could be too strong but they were strong enough each on their own so that we can

make our government work anti-federalists were people who opposed the constitution because they really

wanted that weak federal government they wanted the powers to remain in the states but ultimately the federalists

won out because we do have the constitution that we have today okay so when the constitution was

written and you typically won't see a question about the structure of the constitution but it is a preamble that

starts with we the people hopefully you remember sets up that concept of self-government and then there it is

followed by seven articles each of those articles define a function of government so article one established the

legislative branch article two the executive branch article three i believe the judicial branch and then some of the

concepts in our constitution you usually aren't asked what each article does on the test so i wouldn't spend too much

time worrying about that but something is a citizen you should know but they looked back four years after

this was ratified so the constitution was ratified in 1789 it was written in 1787 and a couple

years later they said you know the constitution is great but it doesn't do enough to protect the people it really

just set up the structure of government so in order to protect the rights of our citizens we need to make some changes so

an amendment is considered a change or an addition so amendments become part of the constitution and the first 10

amendments are called the bill of rights all 10 of those amendments the bill of rights were ratified or passed at the

same time in 1791 just two years after the constitution was ratified it is not easy to change our constitution right we

said this is the supreme law of the land you wouldn't want people to easily change it there's only been about 30 to

32 times that something has made it on a ballot to be approved by voters in order to

um be a common amendment to the u.s constitution but there have only been the first 10

and then there are a total of 27 amendments so 17 times since the bill of rights has an amendment passed so to

make it not easy and this is often a test question they may ask you which of the following are required in order for

uh to make an amendment to or for an amendment to be ratified uh to the constitution

so amendments can only be made and it's listed on your handout and on the screen here two-third vote in senate and the

house or by a special convention requested by the states um so far all of our

amendments that have passed have come from the two-thirds vote in the senate and the house of representatives

and then once they have that amendment that passes through

both houses then it goes on the ballot for each of the states in a federal election and the

amendments must then be ratified by three quarters of the states it's a pretty hefty process to get one

passed and like i said there are currently 27 total amendments so we're going to spend a significant

amount of time on the amendments because probably about a third of your test questions will be in some way related to

the amendments possibly even more because many of the supreme court cases are

related to amendments as well so we want to make sure you have a really strong understanding of these amendments so the

first amendment is probably the one that many people are familiar with and has the most kind of independent pieces in

it so the first amendment deals with all things related to your freedom of expression you express yourself in many

different ways you express yourself in your oral communication your written communication so speech and writing

in how you practice religion um how you assemble how you petition

government so there are five major category four major categories here freedom of speech freedom of religion

freedom of assembly freedom of the press i was right five and freedom to petition the government

so one of those concepts that you will see time and time again on your civic literacy test is this concept of freedom

of religion which is called the free exercise clause so if you are asked a question what does the free exercise

clause do it is part of the first amendment and if you remember one of the main reasons the colonists came to the

colonies which became the united states was for this freedom of religion they did not want to have a set state

religion so what the free exercise clause says is that anyone in the united states has the right to practice any

religion they choose or no religion at all and that's an

important concept there so free exercise means the freedom to practice any religion you choose or no religion at

all so we will talk more about the first amendment as we go through these so

your next few slides are going to be specifically the different amendments the first slide here is the first ten

amendments which is called referred to as the bill of rights

um so we talked about the first amendment which deals with freedom free exercise right

free exercise of religion freedom of speech freedom of the press right to peacefully assemble

and right to petition the government and remember these are rights for everyone in the united states regardless of

citizenship so anyone living in the united states an undocumented immigrant would have the opportunity to

petition the government they have the right to peacefully assemble second amendment is one that's very

controversial it comes up quite often particularly when there are mass shootings

and many of you may know the biggest proponent for this amendment which is the nra or the national rifle

association so the sec second amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms so a lot of debate has been about this

and you will we will talk about uh in the second workshop a landmark supreme court case that deals with this but what

did they founding fathers mean when they said the right to bear and keep arms was it so that in these new united states we

were able to establish an army and a militia to protect ourselves or it is for the is it for the individual right

of the individual person to protect themselves or what does it mean

so that's something that's continually but it basically deals with the right to bear arms for guns

the third amendment we talked about a little bit earlier is prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes

so remember one of the reasons that we declared our independence was we didn't like being required to house

soldiers in our homes in the colonies so the third amendment prohibits this the fourth amendment

uh prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and it sets out requirements for search

warrants so we will have two landmark supreme court cases we will talk about that deal with fourth amendment when are

they allowed to use evidence that's found in us in a search what are the requirements for search warrants etc

the fifth amendment many of you may have heard of several of these things fifth amendment has several concepts in it the

first one um that i'm going to talk about is eminent domain eminent domain is a little bit different here so

eminent domain is the i the concept that the government has the right to take land from private landowners as long as

they compensate them fairly so the fifth amendment is really establishing different policies and what the steps

are to do things so this set out what the policies are so when would this ever happen when would the government come

and take our private homes so for example when we were when we were building

and expanding the country we had to put things in place like highways and railroads so imagine you're building a

railroad as you're moving west through these treacherous mountain ranges and it's really hard to navigate and you

have the perfect path but someone's house is sitting right on that path you need for that railway and if you don't

build through where that house is you would have to go around mountains and cause months of additional labor and

might never finish this railroad so you can then go as long as you provide fair compensation for that individual take

their home to continue the work it is not done often as far as i know and i do want to establish one thing i

am not a political scientist i am not a historian i learned this content when

this became a requirement for students to graduate so that i could help you learn the material you need to graduate

so certainly if you want more information talk to a historian talk to a constitutional law expert and they'll

be happy to share with you um but the fifth amendment also deals with a lot of things in the legal realm

so it protects rights of due process so what is due process due process make sure that every person gets follows the

same requirements so for example if someone is arrested there is a process that has to be followed how long can you

hold them before you press charges what happens once you have press charges how long do they have until they can be

arraigned what is the process for all this what is the process for bail so all of these things to keep equity to keep

fairness in the system so we don't have one set of rules for one person and a different set for another that's called

due process we'll see due process come up again in the 14th amendment um the fifth amendment also

protects people against self-incrimination and double jeopardy so we're going to talk about double

jeopardy first double jeopardy is the concept that if you are accused of a crime

and then you are later acquitted of that crime you are found not guilty they cannot then find different new

evidence and come back and try you for the same crime twice so for example if i were accused of

murder and i went to trial and i was acquitted and later they came back with new dna evidence or they came back with

a video showing that i had actually committed that murder they could not charge me with that same crime now if

there was evidence for a new crime they could certainly do that and that's called double jeopardy when you can't be

tried for the same crime twice the other concept in the fifth amendment is self-incrimination

so that means that if i am being questioned and i know that the answer to my question is going to show my guilt i

do not have to answer it so you may have heard people on a witness stand in the movies saying i plead the fifth

that's saying that they're pleading the fifth amendment they're using their right to not self-incriminate

so that is in there and we will be dealing with a landmark supreme court case uh miranda versus arizona you may

have heard your miranda rights which tells you you have the right to remain silent that is uh for the fifth

amendment and that is one of the supreme court cases we'll discuss the sixth amendment deals with things

like a fair and speedy public trial by jury so it says that you're not gonna have one judge necessarily

um making decisions but that it will the justice will proceed quickly and that you do have the right to a jury

trial in many cases um you also have the right to know who accused you to confront the

accuser to have witnesses things like that and the other piece that's really

important is the ability to retain counsel right so we know from if you've watched television like i do law and

order hopefully you don't know this from personal experience the miranda law which says you have the right to remain

silent right that's that fifth amendment self-incrimination anything you say can you can and will be used against you and

you have the right to an attorney this is the ability to retain counsel in the sixth amendment we will talk about a

second landmark supreme court case that talked about what happens if you cannot afford an attorney um and we'll talk

about that in the second workshop the seventh amendment is similar to the sixth amendment amendment but it's

dealing with in civil cases so a criminal case versus a civil case a criminal proceeding so for example if

there's a car accident and the person was driving under the influence and injured someone that would be considered

criminal and bound by the sixth amendment in seventh amendment if that person was in a car accident and it was

just an accident there was no real fault um that was criminally negligent then they

would have the right to a jury trial and things like that in civil cases eighth amendment deals with um excessive

fines excessive bail cruel and unusual punishment basically this was establishing that um you can't have a

punishment that doesn't fit the crime so you can't be accused of uh jaywalking and get a ten thousand

dollar fine for that or a year in jail for something that would be considered minor

the ninth amendment and the tenth amendment we're going to talk about together because they're really

interesting so the ninth amendment protects rights not enumerated which means spelled out described in the

constitution the tenth amendment reinforces that concept of federalism saying that the federal government only

has powers that are defined in the constitution and not um anything that's not defined in the constitution belongs

to the state so remember we talked about this concept in the when the constitution laid out what government

can do the constitution only spells out what the federal government can do

anything that is not in the constitution is considered a state uh power

with a couple of exceptions so that's where we get into the the uh ninth and tenth amendments so

for example i have my cell phone here when they were writing the constitution back in 1787

they didn't have a way to know that there would be video workshops and cell phones and computers they didn't even

have electricity right so at that point they couldn't necessarily

think of every possibility that would be required so there is something in our constitution called the necessary and

proper clause or the elastic clause and what that means is that the constitution spells out what the what the federal

government can do but there are also things that might not be spelled out in the constitution that

are necessary and proper for the government to carry out the work they need to do

so we'll talk about that in one of the landmark supreme court cases where which deals with banks right so the federal

government has the power to print money that is one of the powers described in the constitution they have the power to

collect taxes well it didn't say they have the power to create a bank but that is something that was necessary

and proper for them to be able to do the business that is required under the constitution for them so that is

considered necessary and proper and you can think of it it's also called the elastic clause when we stretch an

elastic band this allows us to stretch what the constitution allows to fit in what we need to be able to do our jobs

so but it is important to know that anything that is not spelled out in the constitution and is not necessary and

proper for the federal government to do the things that are required in the constitution that it is a power of the

state okay so that was the bill of rights deep breath we are moving on to the

other amendments so the other 17 amendments the 11t 11 this is when i talk too much the 11th

amendment deals with sovereign immunity which basically limits how

um the accountability for different states for people who are outside of those areas

the 12th amendment changed the presidential election process before the 12th amendment you would vote for

two for different candidates the one who got the most votes became president the second most would become vice president

you can imagine how that might not work especially if they're from dueling parties so this changed it so that the

president runs on a ticket you elect a president and a vice president together i haven't seen any questions on the 11th

or 12th amendment but important for you to know anyway now we get into important stuff so the

13th amendment abolished slavery so think back who was president at the time so this was at the end of the civil war

abraham lincoln was president he wrote he stated the emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment amendment which

was passed which is abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime so when someone is

in prison we can require them to work while they are imprisoned but they we cannot have slavery

after the 13th amendment these next couple that follow were things trying to put in place so we didn't just abolish

slavery and all of a sudden everything was wonderful for black and african american citizens

things didn't really change that quickly so the 14th amendment was put into place first it defines citizenship before that

you might remember the three-fifths rule that slaves were con were not even considered

a person and we will talk about a supreme landmark supreme court case dred scott versus sanford where we see that

they wouldn't even the supreme court wouldn't even rule because the african-american slave wasn't considered

a citizen so it defines citizenship we see this word due process again again so this is looking at the rights for

people and making sure things are fair and the most important part of this would be what we call the equal

protection clause so think about what we might mean by equal protection who might need equal protection obviously in this

time period we were talking about the ending of slavery so we were talking about equal protection in the eyes of

the law for our black and african american citizens but that is also encompassing other

groups of people as well so equal protection can be applied in terms of gender it can be applied in terms of

race and ethnicity it can be term in terms of um disability or ability it can be in terms

of age discrimination there are many ways sexual orientation many ways equal protection and the 14th amendment is

used and we will have several supreme court cases when we talk about landmark supreme court cases that deal with the

14th amendment the first and the 14th amendment have the most landmark supreme court cases you will need to know for

the civic literacy test so an important one to know so now we abolish slavery

we've set up these things to provide them for equal equal protection right after that the 15th amendment was passed

which allowed blacks and african-americans the right to vote so remember it's still only men who are

voting right before this it was white men now we're allowing all men have the right to vote

over a certain age at this point so the 16th amendment so the 15th amendment is important to know it is one

of four um amendments that deal with voting so you will often see a question which of

the following amendments deal with voting the 15th amendment was the first one and that dealt with um

all men could vote so it took away the exclusion by race the 16th amendment looked at income

taxes and how we can create taxes and the taxes were based on the u.s census so if you are not

familiar with the us census the u.s census is the counting of the people in our country it is part of our

constitution it is a constitutional requirement that we have a census every 10 years

so in 2020 there will be a census and it will be again in 2030. the results of that census are then used for tax

purposes but also to determine how many um house of representative members each

state has and where they are just where they are coming from within that state the 17th amendment established direct

election of senators by popular vote so you go to the polls you vote for the senator whoever gets the most votes then

wins that seat there is currently only one major position in the country that is not elected directly and not directed

directly by popular vote do you know which position that is so that is the president of the united

states the president of the united states is still voted on the people go to the polls and vote and

they are voting how they want their electoral representatives to vote for them so it

is the president is not directly elected it is elected by the electoral college so you may see that on the test

the 18th amendment is interesting because the 18th amendment is the only amendment that is not currently active

so if you get asked how many amendments there are there are 27 amendments but only 26 of them are active you may have

heard of prohibition so this was in right after world war one they repeal they sorry they

prohibited the manufacturer sale of alcohol in the united states that lasted for

about 10 to 15 years until the 21st amendment repealed that and we were now allowed to manufacture and sell alcohol

in the united states the 19th amendment is the second of our voting amendments and it allowed women

to vote so we just celebrated at the time of this recording we just celebrated the 100th anniversary in 2020

of women gaining the right to vote that just happened a few weeks ago so now

with the 15th amendment allowed voting by race the 19th amendment allowed by gender so women could vote

the 20th amendment just changes the date on which the president vice president takes office which is january 20th and

january 3rd when congress starts their new session okay the last few the 21st amendment was

just repealing uh oh sorry repealing the 18th amendment so it stopped it ended prohibition

the 22nd amendment is important you will probably see a question on that it limited the number of times that a

person can be elected president so we'll talk about this a little later in the presentation but

um there are reasons why you can imagine if you think about what

we were concerned about with our original um being under british role so we were

under british rule which was a monarchy they had someone in power for a very long time so

the 22nd amendment was actually just after our only president who was elected to more than two terms uh had passed

away do you know who that was so our only president who was elected to more than two terms was franklin delano

roosevelt otherwise known as fdr he was president during the great depression and world war ii

he was a good leader this was not passed because we did not think he was a good president but people realize that

without having limits term limits that someone could potentially get into power for a very long time so they passed this

22nd amendment which limits how many times someone can be elected to office

the 23rd amendment grants the district of columbia so you should know that our capital is in washington dc but the

district of columbia is not part of a state so they actually do get electors in the electoral college equivalent to

the least populous state so if the least populous state gets one electoral vote then the district of

columbia would have one electoral vote 24th amendment is a is related to voting so i put it up

there that's why i say there are four amendments dealing with voting it is not directly who is allowed to vote but

indirectly it is 100 based on who can vote so the 24th amendment made it illegal to charge a poll tax a poll tax

is a tax on people who are going to the voting polls and these these poll taxes were often

implemented in your lowest income areas which were typically where you would have your underrepresented minorities so

if you can think about this this was really a way to sway the vote so that you were discounting the votes or not

allowing the votes for our black and african-american citizens and other minorities um and the poor so because if

you go to the to to vote and they're going to charge you and you don't have money you were turned away so the 24th

amendment made it illegal for poll taxes the 25th amendment um and i have seen questions on the civic literacy test

about this addresses the succession of office so what happens if the president can no longer complete

their term so a president may not be able to complete a term because they die in office that's happened a few times

either natural death or assassination or they step down from office we've had one president who has resigned that is

richard nixon so if they're or if they're impeached and removed from office what happens so the order of

succession used to be president to vice president to the secretary of state the 25th amendment

changed that from president to vice president to the speaker of the house of

representatives the current speaker of the house is nancy pelosi so if both the president and vice president were unable

to complete their term in office then it would go to the speaker of the house or nancy pelosi it has happened nine times

in our history that a president was unable to complete one of the terms they were elected for but it has never gone

beyond the vice president the 26th amendment is the final voting amendment so we had 15th amendment which

dealt with race the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote the 24th amendment which

got rid of poll taxes and now the 26th amendment which um

lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. and then the final amendment delayed laws

based on congressional salaries so basically congress if they wanted to vote that they would have a salary

increase they can vote that it will go into effect for the next term so the next time congress takes

office they would get the salary increase so they're technically not voting themselves a salary increase

although without term limits many of our congress representatives come back in every single year or every term and so

technically in my opinion they're still giving themselves a salary increase those are our 27 amendments

you guys tired so you've got this we are getting close to the end so just a quick refresher i

talked about this there are four amendments about voting the 15th amendment which said american men of all

races can vote 19th amendment women can vote 24th amendment made poll taxes or fees to vote illegal and the 26th

amendment lowered the voting age so you will often see a question that might say all of the following are

um are for us citizens only accept so there are three things that only u.s

citizens can do u.s citizen you must be u.s citizen to vote in a federal election you must be a u.s citizen to

serve on a federal jury and to run for federal office so those are three things only citizens can do but remember we

talked about everyone living in the u.s regardless of citizenship is protected by the constitution so anything that is

in the bill of rights protects all people in the united states you may also see a question asking you

which of the following are not are ways that you can participate in your democracy or

which of the following is not a way to participate in your democracy so think about when you see these

questions read them carefully and think about them so what are ways to participate in democracy anything that

you're going to do that's going to have an impact on the democracy of our country so voting

that's your number one civic responsibility you but if you want to have a stronger voice running for office

where you're going to represent other people joining a civic group to get your word out writing an article a letter to

the editor of a newspaper or putting a blog online about some kind of a political belief that you have um

publicis publicly supporting an issue or policy emailing your congress member or calling

your congressmember working on a political campaign those are always so you might see a

question you can americans can participate in democracy by all the following except and it might give you

any of these choices on there and it might say volunteering at a soup kitchen or

volunteering at an animal hospital those are all lovely things to do and you encourage you to do them but they are

not necessarily participating in your democracy okay so the next few things are that are

we're going to go through are things that are in the study guide they are fair game for questions on the test but

i have very infrequently seen these topics come up um you may get one or two questions so we don't want to spend too

much time on these um but i don't want you to be caught off guard so knowing the political parties is

something that is in the study guide i have never seen a question asking about historic political parties um currently

the two major political parties in the united states are democratic and republican there are hundreds of

political parties there's independents there's green parties there's parties for just about anything you can imagine

but if you are asked a question democratic and republican are the two main parties that most of our

representative government is based on before the modern times there were plenty of other parties but i have not

seen questions about them if you do take the test and see a question about the wig party i apologize that we didn't

prepare you for that some other things you might be question tested on um the last day to file file

federal income taxes to the irs is april 15th so in a few minutes we'll talk about taxes tax is the only shared power

that both the federal government has the right to tax and your state government has the right to tax but your federal

taxes are due april 15th you may also see a question about the selective service if you are not

familiar with selective service um this is a requirement that all men ages 18 to 26 who are u.s citizens must register

for this and this is for if we ever go to a draft there was only a draft one time in our history and that was during

the vietnam era it was very unpopular they are not expecting to have to go back to a draft

however it is a requirement that if we are to go to war we want to make sure that we have

people to serve in that war i find it interesting that women are allowed to serve in the military but they are not

required to register for selective service students i believe when you apply for

admission to university or for federal financial aid you have to confirm that you are

registered with selective service you can do that when you get a library card you could do that when you register at

the dmv to get your driver's license there are many ways to register for selective service

and if you are male and a resident citizen of the united states hopefully you've done that already if you're

between 18 and 26. okay you also may see a question about our economic system so we are considered

a capitalist or a market economy that means that most of our businesses are privately owned we don't have all all of

our businesses are not owned by the federal government where they set and regulate prices most of our businesses

allow for competition setting of prices supply and demand determines what we produce and how much of it and what we

charge for things within legal realms we can produce what we want charge what we want for them etc

you may also again these are not frequently on the test but they're on the study guide so you may be asked

about them how did we grow the u.s so we a huge amount of our we've doubled

our space in the united states with the louisiana purchase in 1803 for a mere 15

million dollars which was not a lot of money even at that time for what we got for that gave us a tremendous amount of

land um we also have five u.s territories i learned this as i was preparing this

presentation i always knew that puerto rico and u.s virgin islands were territories we also have american samoa

northern mariana islands and guam each of these has a representative in congress they are not voting members but

they do get to have their voice heard they do not have senators so they have a person in the house of representatives

who can be there to participate but not vote and citizens of territories vote in the

primary election so they can determine who potentially who would be the candidate

for their party but they don't get to vote in the general election i'm not sure why again you can certainly

talk with uh someone who is a political scientist about that you may be asked about our capital the

capital of the united states is in washington d.c you also may be asked about the statue of liberty is located

in new york harbor or liberty island again you may get one or maybe two questions about wars out of a hundred so

if you don't want to spend a lot of time learning about the wars there are 99 or 98 other questions that you will get

right so you don't need to necessarily spend too much time on this and when i have seen a question about a war it is

usually very general you don't need to know a lot of details but here are the primary wars that we have been involved

with um since the revolutionary war since our founding of the united states um in the 1700s we had the revolutionary

war that is important to know it was when we broke away from great britain to gain our independence the civil war

also known as the war of the north versus the south union versus confederates was to end slavery but also

a huge economic war um there were three other wars in the 1800s the war of 1812 mexican-american

war and spanish-american war i have not seen questions on that but you can feel free to study for that as well

um world war one and when i realized when i created this i put who our allies were for world war one and who are we

fought against in world war ii um but in world war one we were with britain france and italy it ended with the

treaty of versailles world war ii you might remember the japanese bombing pearl harbor nazi germany so that was

the focus in there then most of the wars after that have been

trying to uh stop the spread of communism and keep democracy so the korean war was trying

again to create a democratic government vietnam war again trying to get rid of

the communist government in vietnam so this cold war period um was trying to stop the spread of communism and went

from like the 50s until the 80s the gulf war and the persian gulf war this is when i was in college in the

1990s a heavy emphasis on oil to drive the iraqi army out of kuwait

you may be asked a few questions about keep key people so a few presidents you may want to know george washington who

was our first president the father of our country a general in the revolutionary war

thomas jefferson was our third president he was the major author of the declaration of independence

abraham lincoln was a president who did the emancipation proclamation which led to the 13th amendment the freeing of

slaves uh woodrow wilson and i remember this w w woodrow wilson was president during

world war one fdr we talked about he was franklin delano roosevelt was president during

the great depression in world war ii he was elected for a fourth term he served for 12 years because he died

right after being elected um right after starting his fourth term and if you remember the 22nd amendment

was the amendment was passed after that in order to put term limits that no president could be elected for more than

two terms you may see a question about benjamin franklin i have seen a question about

him quite often um so it's typically added benjamin franklin was all of the following except

so he was a us diplomat he was never president he was a us diplomat he was

the oldest member of the constitutional convention that started the the u.s constitution

he was also our first postmaster general of the us so i thank him when i get nice mail i am sad when i get bills uh he

wrote poor richard's almanac and he started the first free library so when you go to the wimberley library and you

can check out 500 books you can thank benjamin franklin someone also who has attended these

workshops shared that they saw a question about benjamin franklin that asked about something about discovering

electricity with the kite and a key so that might be a choice you find as well susan b anthony was a leader in the

women's right movement and martin luther king jr a leader of the civil rights movement

okay so we're switching gears for the rest of this workshop we're going to be talking about basic concepts of us

government we are almost there folks hang in there you are doing great so basic concepts of us government we're

going to talk about the three branches what each of their powers are what the terms of office those are frequent test