DRAFT YOUR OWN BILL OF RIGHTS
[Updated: May 9, 2004]
Class Activities
1. Put yourself in the shoes (i.e. try to act and think like they would at the time) of an inhabitant of the Americas in the 17th or 18thC and write your own Bill of Rights from the perspective of one of the following individuals:
-
a Puritan minister
- a large land-owning and slave-owning farmer
- a small land-owning farmer
- a merchant
- a run-away slave
- a freed Haitian slave
- a young female school teacher
- a tribal Native-American
2. Imagine yourself to be the citizen of a newly created state. You have the chance to write a Bill of Rights for your new country. What should it include?
3. Imagine that you, the students of Allisonville E.S., have staged a successful revolt against the Principal and teachers, that you have called for a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, and that you have a chance to draft a Bill of Students' Rights. What should it include?