We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution Lesson 2 Worksheet / Test

50 Multiple Choice Questions about the ideas that inspired the Founding Fathers

This worksheet is intended for use with Lesson 2 of We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, an excellent high-school level textbook published by the Center for Civic Education. There are actually several levels of We the People available. You can tell if this worksheet matches your text by looking at the book cover thumbnail image included near the top of this page.


MEETING TEACHERS' NEEDS

If you have used this text, you have probably had the same reaction to it as myself -- fantastic content, placing government concepts in their rich historical context where they are best understood.... but where’s the testing program?

Indeed, the major drawback I have found to the We the People textbook is a lack of strong ancillaries. That is why I have developed my own. This worksheet has been used by real high-school students and has kept them engaged and on-task while providing me, their teacher, with valuable information about how well each of them is mastering government concepts.


A PRACTICAL APPROACH

All questions are presented in “lesson order,” so that they can be used as a guided reading activity if desired. I often use them as tests instead, however, requiring students to answer questions from memory alone. I have found that if students read the text with partners and discuss it along the way, they have excellent recall and can easily achieve scores of 80% and higher even without being able to look in the textbook to check their first impressions.

LESSON 2 CONTENT:

"People frequently make judgments about governments or acts of governments, praising them as "good" or criticizing them as "bad." Those judgments may reflect ideas about human nature, the proper function and scope of government, the rights of individuals, and other values. Political philosophers have discussed these matters for thousands of years. This lesson examines concepts such as the common good, civic virtue, the state of nature, natural rights, consent, and the social contract. These concepts are central to discussions about government. When you have finished this lesson, you should be able to describe how and why natural rights philosophy differs from classical republicanism and how both systems of thought influenced the founding generation in America.