Mural by Shepard Fairey in Milwaukee, created in collaboration with Tyanna Buie, Niki Johnson, Tom Jones, Claudio Martinez, and Dyani Whitehawk. Photo credit: Jonathan Furlong and Niki Johnson Studio.
In a time when powerful figures claim to defend the Constitution while undermining it, students must know their rights — not just to pass a test, but to protect themselves. They need to understand their right to remain silent (5th Amendment); their right to birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection of the law for all people (14th Amendment); and their right to speak out and protest injustice (1st Amendment); and their protection from unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Amendment), which is especially critical today as surveillance technologies expand and law enforcement agencies disproportionately target marginalized communities.
But knowing rights isn’t enough. Students should also be encouraged to ask hard questions: Why doesn’t our Constitution guarantee housing, healthcare, education, or a living wage — rights enshrined in other countries’ constitutions? Why did the original document legalize slavery? Why did it take a Civil War to amend that — and why does the 13th Amendment still allow slavery as punishment for a crime? Why are the rights we do have so often denied, especially to Black, Brown, poor, queer, and immigrant communities?
Throughout U.S. history, people have fought to expand the rights the Constitution promises — and to demand the rights it omits. Constitution Day should not be an unquestioning celebration of myth, but an invitation to think critically. Students deserve to study the Constitution honestly, to compare it with broader visions of justice — like the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program, which demanded education, housing, employment, and an end to police violence — and to decide for themselves what rights a just society should guarantee.
This lesson is designed to help students consider not just what the Constitution says, but what it leaves out. Through a series of interactive activities, students:
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- Reflect on the purpose of a constitution
- Investigate which rights are and are not protected by the U.S. Constitution
- Compare those protections with the rights guaranteed in other countries’ constitutions
- Reflect on what these comparisons reveal about U.S. values
- Imagine how new rights could be added through struggle, law, or organizing
Access the full lesson and handouts at the Download to Read in Full button. Find additional resources to teach outside the textbook about the Constitution.
Classroom Stories
My U.S. history class at School Without Walls (a D.C. Public School) engaged in the lesson “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect? by Jesse Hagopian. Some of the students’ insights and reflections were:
I was surprised by the sheer number of human necessities that were not rights. Clean drinking water, food, housing, just basic human needs that are not provided but the right to bear arms is. The priorities are a bit interesting.
I think a lot of the rights that are protected are more economically based. They’re more focused on protecting enterprise and business. Many rights for the people weren’t added until much later.
We do not have some rights that are considered human needs like food and clean drinking water.
I learned a lot about how certain amendments came about. I also learned about amendments I didn’t know existed and that some I thought existed didn’t actually exist.
My main takeaways are that the United States still has a lot of work to do as a nation to guarantee its citizens’ well being, and that we need to play an active role in making sure our government upholds our rights.
According to our constitution, U.S. citizens are not explicitly entitled to what should be considered basic rights such as access to food, clean water, and affordable healthcare.
Today, many people are having their rights violated. This lesson helps us young people (as the future of the U.S.) to work towards solving these problems within our communities.
The Constitution is currently being heavily attacked and disassembled. We have to be aware of that.
After five years of teaching high school social studies, I made the switch to middle school. With this exciting transition came a little chaos and a brand new curriculum. For Constitution Day, I knew I needed something different and accessible for my 7th graders, so I went to the Zinn Education Project for ideas. I adapted the lesson “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect? and gave students their first “pop quiz” on their rights in the Constitution.
When they finished, most were confident they had aced it because to them, the rights listed seemed like no-brainers. But as the 50% (and lower) scores started rolling in, their confusion quickly turned to curiosity. We used that moment for open dialogue and a See, Think, Wonder about a graph showing which countries guarantee certain rights they assumed were part of U.S. citizenship.
They were shocked and motivated. To close the lesson, students added sticky notes to a hallway poster, naming the right they believe should be added to the Constitution and why. The most common theme was food and housing, with many noting, “Other rights are useless if I am dying of hunger.”
The poster (below) now hangs in our hallway, serving as a reminder of student voice, reflection, and action.
I taught my first ever lesson on Constitution Day, using “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect?
Students were amazed to learn that clean water, food security, and employment are not rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — and that perhaps they should be!
Each student became a “constitutional scholar” on their specific right, they discussed and answered the questions, and then together we reviewed the answers.
We utilized segments of “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect? during our mini-lesson on Constitution Day, September 17th.
Students watched a brief Black History Crash Course video by Clint Smith, providing an overview of the Constitution. Then they received the Student Chart where they could select which rights they felt were guaranteed in the Constitution. It was interesting to see how students navigated the chart, asking probing questions about what certain rights meant and other clarifying details before making their selections.
Not surprisingly, most students marked that almost all of the rights listed either should be, or were, already covered in the Constitution. This made the big reveal in our review of the actual answer sheet quite shocking for the group. Students were floored that essentials like clean water, housing, healthcare, and employment, among many others, were not guaranteed in the Constitution. The conversation that followed was both productive and powerful. Students explored many possible solutions to these clear and obvious gaps in our founding documents.
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