What Prompted our Founding Framers to Propose a Separation of Church and State?
1:16
Grades: 6 - 12
Video Description: Jessie Steffan, Staff Attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, ACLU, provides background on why the Founding Framers proposed a separation of church and state.
Type of Video: Segment*
Unique Video ID: First Amendment-64**
Quick Ideas for Using the Video:
- Use the video with other Educate.Today videos dealing with freedom of religion and/or the First Amendment in a jigsaw activity. Have different students/student groups view different videos and report their learning to the class.
- Have students paraphrase the reasons Ms. Steffan gave for the framers’ point of view.
- What is student reaction to the final reason Ms. Steffan said influenced the framers? Do they believe a national religion would have made it more difficult for the nation to unify?>/li>
*Segment videos are short excerpts edited from interviews or interactive programs that offer flexible and differentiated ways to use the rich content included in the full-length conversation.
**The unique Video ID can be used to quickly locate a single video in the ET collection. This search function is designed to let teachers assign students to watch a specific video and have only that video appear as a search result. Just click on Search and choose “By Video ID.” Then type in the Video ID as it appears above. Be sure to include the dash.
