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Social Studies 5: Let's Make a Change! 3 Views
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Description:
We've been wearing the same clothes for a week now and we really need—oh, erm...never mind. Today's lesson is about changes to the constitution. Take a look at the video and don't step too close to us.
Transcript
- 00:03
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:12
When you don't get something right the first time sometimes it just [George Lucas with star wars figures]
- 00:14
takes a small change to perfect it like fixing your outfit by swapping out
- 00:17
your wacky shoes and exchange for some not so wacky ones.. Or adjusting your [Man in a suit has shoes swapped]
- 00:21
swing just a smidge in order to finally hit that home run....But these little
Full Transcript
- 00:26
changes are just reserved for outfits and baseball in fact changes can be made
- 00:30
even to the most important document in America's history...The Constitution and [Man scribbling on the US Constitution]
- 00:35
they're not made willy-nilly oh no these changes are big important
- 00:39
things called amendments and there's a series of very official though kind of [Man gives the President the amended constitution]
- 00:43
boring steps that the government has to take before making any changes to the
- 00:47
Constitution and of course we're going to have to tell you those steps because
- 00:50
that's the whole education thing we like to do around here.. man we should have
- 00:54
[Woman in ice cream store] been an ice-cream tasting company instead anyway for the sake of keeping things
- 00:58
interesting let's pretend the entire government is made up of wild animals
- 01:01
because why not see that group of beavers, rabbits and one elephant that's
- 01:05
Congress now an amendment can either be proposed by congress with a two-thirds [Rabbits, cat and elephant discussing the amendment]
- 01:10
majority vote in both houses that's the Senate and House of Representatives
- 01:14
or it can be proposed by a constitutional convention which is
- 01:17
basically a meeting called by two-thirds of the state legislators whose purpose
- 01:20
is to make a change to the Constitution and before you get too excited about the
- 01:24
sound of a convention it's nothing like comic-con though we suppose you could [People dressed as Comic book characters]
- 01:28
technically cosplay added if you really want to do whichever way an amendment is
- 01:32
proposed once it's drafted it needs to be submitted to the National Archives
- 01:35
record administration to be processed and published [Elephant and koala in the national archives records administration room]
- 01:39
hey we told you this was all kind of nap inducing since the National Archives
- 01:43
records administration is without a doubt one of the most boring sounding [Group of koala's in a meeting room]
- 01:48
names in the world will use a group of sleeping koalas to represent them since
- 01:52
koala sleep on an average of twenty two hours per day and they're flipping
- 01:56
adorable..... Once the NARA office assembles this
- 01:59
information into a packet they send it up to the governors of each state these [Koala throwing packets to US states]
- 02:03
governors look at it and then formally submit the packet to the state
- 02:06
legislatures oh and don't think we mean to suggest that the state legislatures
- 02:10
are mean because we use shark here we just thought it was only fair to [Camel giving the constitution to a state legislature]
- 02:14
include some sea animals too. The state legislature then considers it and if
- 02:18
they so choose ratifies it and send it to the director of the federal register [A turtle accepting the constitution from state legislature shark]
- 02:21
for examination and as soon as three-quarters or 38 out of 50 states
- 02:26
ratified the amendment becomes part of the Constitution the office of the
- 02:30
Federal Register drops a formal proclamation for the archivist to [Turtle giving speech at the White House]
- 02:34
certify and voila! the Constitution has been amended and that's how you amend
- 02:39
the Constitution all it takes is some beavers, rabbits, koalas, giraffe, sharks
- 02:43
tortoises, owls and a few other animals yes we know they weren't really doing
- 02:48
all the work but just imagine if they were...On second thought maybe it's a good
- 02:52
thing we have humans on the job wake up koala... [President walks into a room of sleeping koalas]
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