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At
the end of each semester, each child who has been tutored
during the semester receives a pocket-size copy of The
Constitution of the United States, autographed by their
tutor. The National Education Project provides all tutors
with free copies of the U.S. Constitution for this
purpose each semester.
There
is something of a precedent for this: Mr. Norman Manasa, Director
of The National Education Project, Inc., is a former employee
of the Supreme Court of the United States, having served as
aide to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. When Mr. Manasa left
the Supreme Court in 1979, he bought a $1 pocket-size copy
of the U.S. Constitution in the Court's gift shop
and then went to say good-bye to each of the nine justices,
asking them to sign the inside cover of the Constitution
as a memento of his days at the Court. And, with remarkable
graciousness, all the justices did.
Mr.
Manasa later returned to the U.S. Supreme Court to work on
the Court's new computer system. On leaving the Court
in 1982, he again went to say good-bye to the justices and
they all once again graciously signed a pocket copy of the
Constitution, the major difference being that Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the
U.S. Supreme Court, was now on the bench.
By
remarkable coincidence, these two documents constitute two
of the rarest historical documents in America; that is,
- The
only copy of the U.S. Constitution signed by all
members of the last all-male
United States Supreme Court, and
- The
only copy of the U.S. Constitution signed by all
members of the first United
States Supreme Court in the history of the country with
a female justice.
The
National Education Project now uses these two documents to
help instill in college undergraduates and in elementary school
children a greater awareness of the central importance of
the U.S. Constitution in their lives and in the lives
of all Americans.
It
should also be said that people who can't read, can't
read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
And that the undergraduates from this Project, therefore,
fulfill an essential function of American citizenship by teaching
these children to read.
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