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LAUREL – Three area students will learn hands-on about U.S. citizenship and government this June.
Carter Korth, a junior at Laurel-Concord-Coleridge School from Belden, is scheduled to attend American Legion Cornhusker Boys State, while fellow LCC juniors Jayden Campbell, Belden, and Lilyan Fox, Coleridge, are set to go to American Legion Auxiliary Cornhusker Girls State.
The 2024 sessions of these annual citizenship programs have been scheduled for June 2-8 on the downtown campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Campbell also is scheduled to attend this year’s American Legion Junior Law Cadet Program June 20-21 at the Nebraska State Patrol Training Academy in Grand Island.
As for Boys State, it is a program for training in the functional aspects of citizenship, with its purpose being to teach the youth of today constructive attitudes toward the American form of government.
The program attempts to show that the U.S. form of government has not outworn its usefulness and that all a democracy needs is an intelligent citizenry and a clean, honest and impartial administration responsive to the will of the people.
Boys State is functional in that applications of the principles of democratic government are made in every possible way and should be thought of as being a mythical 51st state with a constitution, statutes and ordinances constructed by the citizens to govern themselves.
Citizens of Boys State not only will be required to review knowledge already acquired concerning the political machinery of a commonwealth, but they will find themselves performing exactly the same functions as real officeholders in the everyday world.
In Boys State, citizens organize their own city, county and state governments. They choose their own officials in accordance with regulation election procedures. They learn the duties of the various city, county and state offices. They introduce and argue their own bills in a legislature. Justice is administered by their own law enforcement agencies and courts.
The program, which originated in Illinois in 1935 and was adopted by the national organization of the American Legion three years later, is now in operation in 49 states and will enroll about 20,000 boys this year.
Every spring, the Girls State program provides about 25,000 young women from across the country with a hands-on educational opportunity designed to instruct tomorrow’s leaders in the privileges and duties of responsible citizenship.
Delegates receive special instruction in parliamentary procedure and organize themselves into two mythical political parties. They then campaign, hold rallies, debate and ultimately vote to elect city, county and state officials.
Once elected to office, delegates are sworn in and perform their prescribed duties. Citizens not elected to office are given appointments and will attend meetings with the offices of their elected or appointed counterparts in actual state, county and city government.
The American Legion Auxiliary developed its citizenship training program based on the formation of the American Legion’s Boys State program.
