Federalist Paper #1 – “Joderna”
Don’t you hate when you come into class for the first time and the teacher has already created a seating chart? You can’t sit with your friends. You can’t sit where you’re comfortable. Sometimes you can’t even see the board! You have no freedom to choose your seat. So you’re forced to sit next to an annoying smelly stranger. Then your teacher says “turn and and talk to the person next to you” and they ignore you because they don’t know your name. You dread going to class because you hate where you’re sitting. Imagine that you have friends in the class but the teacher separates you all because it is “distracting” when students talk to their friends during class.
Now imagine a world where you can sit wherever you want. When you do group assignments, you can work with the people you already know and enjoy working with. If you have a quick comment that you want to make to a friend, you can lean over and say it.
That world is within your reach. The United Knights of Dalewood Constitution allows students to choose their own seating location for the semester with only limited exceptions for important reasons. Ratify the Constitution now!.
Federalist Paper #2 – “Joderna”
Who is education for? Students! Why don’t students have more say in how they are educated? If school is supposed to be for our benefit, shouldn’t we get to decide what we want to learn and how we should learn it? Why should a teacher get to decide everything for us?
The United Knights of Dalewood Constitution is based on the idea that students should be full participants in planning for their own instruction. This concept is made clear in the Preamble:
We, the Founders of the United Knights of Dalewood, form this government to promote the principles of: mutual respect between the Teacher and the Students; fairness for all and voice for all; powers for students and limits for the Teacher; respecting of differences and recognition of beliefs; and the rights of Students to have the opportunity to exercise control over their own education.
If you believe that students should not be shackled to the authority of a government over which they have no control, ratify! If you think students know better than adults what they want to learn and how they should learn it, ratify! If you are ready to take responsibility to direct your own learning in a way that makes sense, ratify!
Federalist Paper #3 – “Joderna”
We are supposed to be in school to learn. But that isn’t always clear from the way that we are treated by teachers and administrators. Students can learn things by retaking a test. Students can learn things by completing an assignment late. Students might even be able to learn things if they check their phones during class!
But teachers and administrators are so focused on enforcing rules and policies that they forget why we’re here in the first place! They tell us “you can’t do that assignment now, you should have finished it for homework.” But they don’t consider that students are already required by law to devote seven hours of their day to school, that is enough! They tell us “you can’t retake that exam, you should have done better the first time.” But they don’t think about the fact that taking an exam a second time might help us understand the content better. These policies are just to make it easier on teachers, they do not help students to learn more.
The United Knights of Dalewood Constitution gives all students the right to hand in late assignments. It also prohibits the teacher from assigning any homework. If you think school should be more about students learning how to think and less about students learning how to obey authority, ratify the Constitution now.
Anti-Federalist Paper #1 – “Ylatan”
Look around you. What do your fellow students look like? Do you think they have any idea how to run a classroom? Do they even want to learn? How can they be trusted to make this a good class? Why would we put them in charge of anything?
There is no need to overthrow the authority of King Nesin. Yes, he has absolute authority, but everything he has done shows us that he would not use that authority to make this class worse. He’s a former lawyer that knows much more about the content of this class than the students do. He’s a trained teacher that knows more about how to teach than the students do. He appears to have the best interests of the students in his mind.
We should not interfere with our own education just because we are trying to avoid doing a little homework or getting called on in class. The United Knights of Dalewood Constitution seems like it contains sensible rules, but what it really does is prevent King Nesin from teaching the class the way that he knows is best. The Constitution is a bad idea and you should vote “no” on ratification. Let King Nesin keep teaching this class the way he wants to! We will all benefit from placing our trust in his hands.