Question of the Day - December 5

[Angela Cunningham]

“This question of the relationship of the States to the federal government is the cardinal question of our constitutional system. At every turn of our national development we have been brought face to face with it, and no definition either of statesmen or of judges has ever quieted or decided it.”

~Woodrow Wilson


Do you agree or disgree with the quote above? Be sure to use vocabulary and examples from class in your answer.

[cykie]

Yes I agree, because every issue that's ever been raised always has two perspectives: the common good, and the individual rights. In some ways, that resembles the state and the country, because some issues address the needs of a specific group of people (the state), and some issues address the needs of the country in unity. Since we have both a national and state government, we can't be sure we're always answering both sides of the conflict, so we can neither decide for sure and silence the conflict.

[Angela Cunningham]

Excellent start! Add an example...either an historic or current issue...to make your answer even stronger.

[cykie]

For example, education pertains to the state, because each state's students have different needs. You can't address education as a country, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, which is supposed to improve education for all levels of education by increasing accountability standards and emphasis on test results and upping educational standards, such as the goal to reach above a 90% on the cats test this year which is posted all over the classrooms! It has raised a conflict on the matter of Federalism: to whom does the power to regulate education go to? The state or the country? Well, it's supposed to be up to the states to decide, but apparently the nation sees that if the whole country is falling behind on educational standards, then something should be done about it to raise test scores and improve education as a country. Of course, that's understandable. But the disagreement is that the act has not been effective in improving education, and that the major way of accountability in the NCLB act, standardized testing, is "deeply flawed and biased for many reasons". http://usliberals.about.com/od/education/i/NCLBProsCons.htm
And then other issues address the nation as a whole, such as the economy and national defense. These pertain to the nation as a whole, since we cannot point out any one state for being at fault with the economy (of course it depends on exports and imports) or for needing any defense as a state.