Fascination of Online Courses

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Coursera is an organisation that offers a vast amount of many different courses. Many are free though you pay if you want to get a diploma. I heard of the classes through a fellow blogger a few years ago, and I enrolled in two courses on classical music.

My last course that I just completed yesterday has been so intensive and challenging that I haven’t been blogging for a week or more. I have felt like being consumed into the lectures and using all my energy to try to hang on and understand enough to be able to pass the tests that are included in each week’s teachings.

Would you like to know what I studied?

It was two 7 weeks courses on the Written Constitution and The Unwritten Constitution of The United States of America.

Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_2

Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_

 

Underneath a fragment of the “Unwritten Constitution” the Federal Papers written by Alexander Hamilton:

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.[3]

I am Danish and live in Denmark. Why should I spend so many hours listening to difficult video lectures? Somehow I just found it so attractive and exciting. I have learnt a lot of new words, and when I read books and articles, the teaching gives me more light on what I am reading.  The Declaration Independence and The Constitution came about as the American people wanted to be free from the tyranny of the British King George III.

The Constitution of the United States Preamble We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

founding-fathers

The Founding Fathers from a page on the Federal Papers

The founding fathers wanted everyday people to be able to read it and understand it. That’s the reason it’s not so long. To have it implemented is something else. As I guess it, precedence gives an understanding of how the law is used in practice. When it was written in 1787, the founders wanted the population to be involved and free. The Constitution with the Bill of Rights was unique and had never been seen in history.

Here a link to Eddie Hyatt’s blog on the connection between the Founding Fathers and Faith in God.

I just found a video of the Founding Fathers and their attempt to end slavery. That’s another story than what is given by the mainstream media and the many protest groups.

 

My son who is studying law in Denmark sent me small YouTube links that explain humorously what important Supreme Court cases mean. Many of these cases have changed conditions for people for gaining the Constitutional civic rights :

You can see different videos for instance “Brown v. Board of Education”. The rest of the videos can be found to the right of the YouTube channel.

 

 

This urge to dig into an area has come to me at other times too on subjects like WWII, the Soviet Union and learning languages.

Do any of you recognise this need for going into an area for a long time as if it was a vital need?

 

Categories: History, USA

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17 Comments »

    • Your comment means a lot to me. I had a hard time to write my impressions from the courses. I took one on Jefferson too from Virginia University where the professor really held Jefferson in such high esteem. I took that course in between the two others and that gave much meaning to me for the fight for freedom. All so valuable and how I wish for school children and students to be educated without bias but to understand the time that was then

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      • Thank you for sending me the link, Maria. As I said on your site – it is terrific to know that some people still remember and appreciate the sacrifices that were made.

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      • We will have to fight ignorance on historical matters. All these graves are so well kept both here and in the Netherlands and in France where I have seen allied graves. In fact we have German war graves too with both soldiers and fugitives. We got a lot of fugitives late in the war

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      • I have read about that, all the moving them around so there would be enough food, who belonged where, etc. I can’t imagine what it was like in Europe for all those years.

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  4. Great article.

    Learning should be continuous and there is always something new to learn everyday… So, keep learning.

    During the last few days, I have been learning algebraic topology. I’m still unsure about its usefulness since my interest in pure mathematics lies in number theory and combinatorics. But it doesn’t really matter because the important thing is that I learned a new thing.

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  5. Maria, as an American I am humbled that you have taken the time to study our Constitution. It is a beautiful piece of writing that I wish wasn’t so often used for the wrong reasons.

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    • It’s been such an interesting journey and I am on a new course this time from a university in California on “constitutional law and structure of government” also very interesting and difficult. I pass the quizzes but I can’t manage the written assignments unfortunately. I just learned how difficult it is to interpret the constitution as political opinions comes in the way in so many cases

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