Easy Simulations: How a Bill Becomes a Law: A Complete Tool Kit With Background Information, Primary Sources, and More to Help Students Build Reading ... Understanding of How Our Government Works [Paperback]

Pat Luce (Author), Holly Joyner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Easy Simulations

Help students gain firsthand knowledge of how our government works with this easy-to-implement, weeklong simulation. After brainstorming real school issues, students form committees, write, present, and revise bills, then vote on them-following the actual steps Congress takes to enact a bill into law. Includes step-by-step directions, plus reproducible student worksheets, primary sources, and rubrics. For use with Grades 5 & Up.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Teaching Resources (Teaching (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0439625734
• ISBN-13: 978-0439625739
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fails on the Basics, January 25, 2011

By 

klb (Toledo, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Easy Simulations: How a Bill Becomes a Law: A Complete Tool Kit With Background Information, Primary Sources, and More to Help Students Build Reading ... Understanding of How Our Government Works (Paperback)

Though the idea of this learning tool is great, it is founded in misinformation. It gets one star for following the process of a bill and one star for including some diagraming for visual learners. However, it fails in two prominent areas.

(1) The book falters from the first when it places American government within a historical tradition of Democracies. Indeed, we are "democratic" because our elected officials get to vote. However, our American government was outlined and founded as a REPUBLIC not a Democracy!

When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention on the last day of deliberation 1787 a woman from the crowd asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got?" He replied, "A REPUBLIC, ma'am, if you can keep it."
Our US Constitution states in Article 4, Section 4, Part 1: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a REPUBLICan form of Government."
Our Pledge of Allegiance states, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands..."

If you think the terms "republic" and "democracy" are interchangeable, think of it this way: The highest authority in a Republic is the rule of law based on higher truth and noble reason as it is stated in the Constitution; the highest authority in a Democracy is a group of humans with the power to act on their own whims and predjudices. A republic teaches that there are absolute rules in which all people must obey regardless of their status of life, a constitutional government; a democracy dictates that what is right for you may not be right for someone else, also known as situational ethics or mob ("majority") rule.

ALL of our Founding Fathers, signers of the Declaration of Independence, co-authors and signers of the US Constitution and our several state constitutions, and authors of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers discuss our American government as a REPUBLIC. (Here are a few but if you search their original writings you can find countless examples.):
"The very definition of a REPUBLIC is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.' That, as a REPUBLIC is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or, in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of REPUBLICS." - John Adams
"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect REPUBLIC. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction." - Thomas Jefferson
"The very existence of the REPUBLIC...depends much upon the public institutions of religion." - John Hancock
"The only foundation for a useful education in a REPUBLIC is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all REPUBLICan goverments." - Benjamin Rush

The same minds indeed warned AGAINST a DEMOCRACY:
"A simple DEMOCRACY ... is one of the greatest of evils." - Benjamin Rush
"DEMOCRACIES, in general, have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." - James Madison
"Remember, DEMOCRACY never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a DEMOCRACY yet that did not commit suicide." - John Adams
"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, DEMOCRACY was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived." - John Quincy Adams
Our Founding Fathers gave us an Electoral College because we were a republic, not a democracy. The Electoral College follows the principle of elected representation. It was designed to further promote the ideals of balance and of separation of powers. It gives the smaller states true representation in a fair and just manner by allowing their voices, as well as rural America, to be heard. It prevents the control of the nation by highly populated urban centers, thus reducing the risk of elections being bought or won by fraud where power could be consolidated.

(2)The book downplays the balances of power created by the US Constitution. As we are a Republic, the highest authority is the law itself and ALL citizens are bound by it. Thus NO citizen (including elected officials right on up to the President of the US) is either above any part of the law nor is allowed to operate outside the law. The 3 branches of govenment are equal in power (or at least they were at our founding). The President heads the Executive Branch but does not hold more power than either the Supreme Court (Judicial Branch) nor the bi-cameral Congress (Legislative Branch). Therefore, I would like to have seen more than just marginal footnotes on both the power of Congress to override the President's vetoes and the power of the Supreme Court to throw out any law they deem unconstitutional.

In conclusion, though the book does have some appropriate information, the complete misunderstanding of the basic shape of our government has undermined the usefullness of this book.