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We’ve talked a lot at my school about how we’d like to do more interdisciplinary teaching. How that helps make everything more meaningful, relevant and engaging for our students, and is more likely to result in deep learning that lasts beyond the end-of-unit test. But we’ve also talked about the obstacles, which include our schedule, our various curricula, and the fact that many of the interdisciplinary topics that most lend themselves to this approach can be controversial topics.

This series of posts has been an attempt to draw in the reader – whether that reader is an educator, other interested adult, or a student at my school – to think about just one topic that lends itself to this approach. I’m not a history or a language arts teacher, so I’m sure these posts could’ve been written much better, with more appropriate quotes or alternative sources or more meaningful connections. But that’s sort of the point. If a former math teacher can put something together that at least made you read this far, imagine what some teachers with some knowledge and talent could do.

Have you read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother yet? You should. (Cory’s day job is contributing to this little blog.) Buy it. Or download it for free. Then get it on your district’s approved literature list, and add it to your unit where you teach 1984 and/or Fahrenheit 451 and/or whatever else you teach in that unit. Have your students also read this. And this. And this. And a bunch of other things I don’t have time to link to at the moment.

Team-teach this in Social Studies and Language Arts - figure out a way to do it. Have students read folks who support and disapprove of current policy (learn more). Have them research both Presidential candidates’ positions (or, if it’s after the election, have them research the winner’s position). Have them find other writers/reporters/bloggers/candidates that have something to say about this. Have them look into the technology of it all. Have them learn about propaganda and persuasion, politics and history, reading and writing, critical thinking and technology. Have them learn enough to take an informed position, then make them argue the other side. Then challenge them to get involved, to try to influence policy. Have them share their knowledge and efforts with others. Have them participate.

Then do it all again with another topic. Immigration. Stem-cell research. Global climate change. Poverty. Real issues that are meaningful, complicated and messy and don't have easy, pre-determined "right answers." Problems that our students actually care about trying to solve and that we actually hope someone will solve. You’re only limited by your imagination.

Nothing less than the future of our democracy depends on a well-informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizenry. Too melodramatic? Perhaps, but I don't care - deal with it. I have an eight-year old daughter and this is what I want for her from her teachers. What do you want for your kid?

Links/sources for quotes in previous posts:

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1984
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas


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1984
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

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1984
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Benjamin Franklin

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Fahrenheit 451
Bruce Schneier

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Little Brother
United States Constitution
The Federalist Papers #84
United States Declaration of Independence

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Little Brother
The Federalist Papers #51
United States Constitution, Bill of Rights

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Little Brother eBook Introduction
Preserving Life and Liberty (a Department of Justice website)
Daniel Solove (summarizing - and then refuting - the “Nothing to Hide” argument)
ACLU Watch List Counter

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Fighting terrorism has become the catch-all excuse for every pipsqueak authoritarian with an axe to grind. It’s the reason we get busted for taking pictures in the subway, carrying a bottle of medicine onto a plane, or objecting to being fingerprinted and forced to show ID just to move around the world. Today’s kids are the most surveilled, most controlled generation in the history of the world.

The Protect America Act modernized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to provide our intelligence community essential tools to acquire important information about terrorists who want to harm America. The Act, which passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2007, restores FISA to its original focus of protecting the rights of persons in the United States, while not acting as an obstacle to gathering foreign intelligence on targets located in foreign countries. By enabling our intelligence community to close a critical intelligence gap that existed before the Act became law, the Protect America Act has already made our Nation safer.

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The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information- gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.

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In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.

By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it. Terrorist watch lists must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine threat. Bloated lists are bad because

• they ensnare many innocent travelers as suspected terrorists, and
• because they waste screeners' time and divert their energies from looking for true terrorists.

Small, focused watch lists are better for civil liberties and for security.

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Under what circumstances should the federal government be prepared to suspend the Bill of Rights?

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

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You’re under the mistaken impression that you’ve been picked up by the police for a crime. You need to get past that. You are being detained as a potential enemy combatant by the government of the United States. If I were you, I’d be thinking very hard about how to convince us that you are not an enemy combatant.

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

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The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

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Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.



He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments

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Right now, some poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Don't think the police don't know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia. Anyway, the police have had him charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns out, it's very usable indeed.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

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Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

"We can all stipulate that the safest place in the world is a totalitarian dictatorship,'' [he] said. Whatever risk was entailed in ''ringing someone's doorbell'' was a small price to pay for life in a free society, he added.

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There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

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Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed— would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper— the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever.

The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.

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There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.