Do you wish more Americans knew the basic facts of our Constitution? Do you wish more disadvantaged kids had the opportunity to get a robust civic education? Do you think all Americans should know the same facts that new entrants to the country have to demonstrate in order to gain citizenship?
Together, we can start to make that happen.
Join the Coolidge Foundation and its partner, Seeking Educational Excellence, in sponsoring a contest that offers students the opportunity to study the Constitution and compete to demonstrate their knowledge of the kind of basic, multiple-choice facts that every new American learns in order to pass the citizenship test.
Your support will enable the Coolidge Foundation and SEE to educate kids outside schools in a challenging, exhilarating, and educational way. Please consider contributing at any of the tiers described below.
The program will concentrate on families of kids in middle or high school in challenged areas of America. We will provide students with a study guide covering the Constitution and American civics. Those middle and high-schoolers who master the material and do well in preliminary contests will be brought to Washington and Coolidge House for an exhilarating final round of competition, a civics-themed tour of our nation’s capital, and honors.
Our goal is to open horizons and inspire kids to do more. So we offer not only cash prizes, but also prizes that fund free access to college-prep tutoring.
Calvin Coolidge himself was profoundly influenced by his study of the Constitution at precisely the age this program is targeting. In his Autobiography, Coolidge describes his first encounter with the Constitution: “Although I was but thirteen years old, the subject interested me exceedingly. The study of it which I began then has never ceased, and the more I study it the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. The good it has wrought can never be measured.”
The Coolidge Foundation and SEE are organizing this initiative under the leadership of Coolidge Trustee Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who recently retired from the federal bench after decades of public service, and Charles Love, author and director of SEE. The Coolidge Foundation also brings to the contest a staff that is veteran in running contests for kids, and has maintained its own debate league for several years. Joined by SEE, the Coolidge Foundation, attorneys and eminent judges will ensure that the questions in our Citizenship Challenge will be both fair and informative
