Wikijunior talk:United States Charters of Freedom

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[edit] Age target of this Wikibook

The way that this has been written seems to be targeted to a much older audience than the typical Wikijunior book. I would put the content and the questions to be typical American High School at the moment (ages 14-18). While this is a laudable goal, it would be good to try and determine exactly who this is aiming at. It needs to be toned down considerably in terms of word complexity and perhaps even the level of the questions if it is to be made for the more typical age range of Wikijunior books. --Rob Horning 16:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions then? As I have attempted to tone it down already.

I would strongly suggest that you read through some of the comments with Wikijunior Solar System and the attempts to lower the target age of the content there. It is not an easy process, and it takes some effort to accomplish. The real issue is that you have to reduce the complexity of the words that are used, avoiding the larger multi-syllabic words and instead use simplier words that are more commonly used by English speakers. The specific formula or metric to determine what the grade level of content is can be argued, but there are several formulas and websites that cover this idea on how to determine what age a given set of prose is intended for.

Also useful to try and cover is some specific curriculum guidelines by a school district or state education system (given the American emphasis on this book, American schools should especially be targets). For some of these standards, look at Help:Textbook Standards for some specific standards that apply to many states (and other countries as well). My experience is that this is indeed something that is covered in High School in the level that you are proposing here, particularly by including the full text of the original documents and providing annotated remarks (perfectly acceptable here on Wikibooks BTW, just unusual for Wikijunior).

[edit] Federalist Papers and Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation, IMHO, is as significant to the people of the USA as is the Declaration of Independence. While it is true that it is viewed by historians as a failed document in the sense that it had no real power and had a number of flaws in its structure, it did establish guidelines for establishing a government for the United States of America, and was the legal basis for the U.S. government that existed prior to 1788. Even if all that is done is contrasting the weakness of the Articles against the Constitution, it is useful and important in terms of putting a context to the U.S. Constitution, and why the Constitution was written in the first place.

As far as the Federalist Papers are concerned, these are citable in arguments with the U.S. Supreme Court when trying to decide constitional issues, and were remarkably insightful in terms of what the founders of the U.S.A. thought the country would eventually become. This is a series of "letters to the editor" that were written by proponents of the Constition, and were instrumental in getting the Constition passed by state legislatures, notably New York and Pennsylvania. Imagine what the USA would be like without either state, and you see the magnitude of what was accomplished with these letters. They predicted the U.S. Civil War, and much of what was written in them has relevance today. Most recently, with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the Federalist Papers were called into service to help interpret the meaning of what was an impeachable offense for a sitting U.S. President. Indeed the very procedure and process to perform the impeachment had to be developed by reading the Federalist Papers, particularly with the impeachment of Richard Nixon when such impeachments had never been previously even considered throughout most of U.S. History.

These are both significant documents in American history, and IMHO a part of the "cannon" of founding documents for the USA. Certainly any book aimed towards children that omits either document fails to effectively explain what the USA is really about and is missing a significant part of American history. If you want to claim that you understand what the U.S. government is about, these are simply must read documents as well. --Rob Horning 13:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)