She was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by the late Ronald Reagan, a president who decried “judicial activism.”
But Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate jurist who retired from the high court two years ago because of her ailing husband, said she can no longer stand by as various groups attempt to politicize the judiciary.
“We hear a lot about judges that are godless, secular activists trying to impose their will,” the 78-year-old said in New York last week. “I always thought an activist judge was one who got up in the morning and went to work.”
Convinced that such vitriol betrays ignorance about the founding principles of the judiciary, O’Connor has undertaken on an unlikely new project: helping to design free video games for junior high-school kids to educate them about the Constitution.
The idea is to teach young people about the judiciary by having them argue real legal issues against the computer and against each other, as part of a civic education project called “Our Courts,” she told a digital games conference.
“Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool,” O’Connor said. “Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work to do.”
O’Connor acknowledged that she is not your typical computer geek. “If someone had told me when I retired from the Supreme Court that I would be speaking at a conference about digital games, I would have been very skeptical, maybe thinking you have had one drink too many.”
But she said she has watched how her grandchildren use computers, noting that junior high students spend on average, 40 hours a week using television, computers and other electronic media. “If we get a little bit of that time, getting them thinking about government and civic engagement, rather than playing shoot-em-up video games, that is a real accomplishment.”
Helping her develop the project is James Paul Gee, a professor at Arizona State who has written several books aobut how digital games teach children not only how to play, but how to learn. The project’s sponsors are Arizona State University and Georgetown University Law Center.
O’Connor said she made the decision to get involved in a civic education project after a 2006 conference she convened with Justice Stephen G. Breyer. “The overwhelming consensus coming out of that conference,” she said, “was that public education is the only long-term solution to preserving an independent judiciary and, more importantly to preserving a robust constitutional democracy.”
The first episode of the game, she said, will revolve around a T-shirt with a provocative logo on it that high school students are passing around and want to wear - a story line recalling the case heard by the Supreme Court last year involving a student who displayed a banner reading, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a school-sponsored event. (The court ruled that the principal could punish the student.)
“We will have them arguing real cases, real issues, against the computer and against each other,” she said. “We will use what we know about young people’s enthusiasm for arguing things, for problem-solving and for playing games to get them into this world.”
The initial elements of the site are scheduled to become available this fall at www.ourcourts.org. The game, as well as an accompanying educational curriculum, will be free.
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1 Comments
#1. eleanor 06.11.2008
great idea, should be required in all schools.
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