What the Constitution Means to Me By Sergei Stahl
(This essay was written by a student at the Freedom Project Academy-FPA. FreedomProject Academy | K-12 Online School. Live or self-paced classes.
For the second year in a row, FPA sponsored an essay contest with the winner and his or her family getting a free week at Camp Constitution’s annual family camp. This was the winning essay.)
Freedom Project Academy
Entering Grade 5
May 31, 2026
The Constitution means freedom. When people started living under the Constitution, they became to more free. The government can’t do whatever it wants. This is different from other countries. This is why people want to come to the United States from other countries. They want to be free.
The Constitution helps us serve the Lord. The Constitution says that the Congress can’t stop us from serving the Lord in the way that we want. This helps us become better people.
The government doesn’t have the power to take away rights. Our rights come from God, not from government. For example, we have the right to serve the Lord. Government doesn’t give us that right. It comes from God. So, it’s not right for the government to tell us how to do that.
The Constitution means we don’t have a king. A king controls everyone in his kingdom. A king can do whatever he wants. If you disagree with the king, he can kill you, or put you in jail without a trial. He can bomb countries. The Constitution gives us a president. The President can’t do whatever he wants. There’s a list of things he can do. That’s it. The President’ doesn’t have the right to go to war.
We have a responsibility to learn about the Constitution. We should learn about it so that we know what it says. If we don’t know what it says, we won’t know if someone is following it. If someone asks you to tell them about a book, and you’ve never read it, you won’t be able to tell them. It’s the same way with the Constitution.
The Constitution shows us that we can change our government. It has changes called amendments. When people found things that needed to be changed in the Constitution, they changed them. The first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights. The first amendment says that the government can’t make you pay taxes to support any church.
Without the Constitution, government would be more powerful. We wouldn’t be able to say whatever we want. We could only go certain places. We would have to get permission from the government to go certain places. We would pay more taxes. We would have to work more to pay for our needs.
The Constitution means stability. Some countries have had over 20 constitutions. This means they are unstable. But we’ve had our Constitution for almost 240 years. It has only been changed twenty-seven times. So our country is much more stable.
Some countries don’t even have a written constitution. If it’s not written down, the people can’t read it. If the people can’t read their constitution, they don’t know what’s in it. If they don’t know what’s in it, the people can’t know if they government is doing what it’s supposed to do.
The Constitution limits the government. It won’t allow the government to freely bomb places. It even says that if the government wants to take your house, they have to pay you for it. If the government wants to search for things in your house, they can’t just do it without permission. They need to ask a judge to approve it and get permission to only search for certain things.
The Constitution doesn’t work unless we follow God. This is because it’s just words on paper. If we just do whatever we want, we won’t have a good world and the world would be wicked. And, we would have to have lots and lots of government to stop people from hurting each other. We would be less free.
I’m grateful for the Constitution. It helps us make sure that people don’t have too much power. When people have too much power, they do whatever they want, and they could tell everyone not to worship God. This is not a good thing.
If you read the Constitution, you’ll be more educated. You’ll learn how our government should work. You’ll also learn how our government should not work. You’ll also appreciate our Founding Fathers, and they will not be forgotten. You’ll also learn new words. You’ll learn what’s good and bad in government. You can learn about the people who signed the Constitution.
God helped with the Constitution. He helped people know how to put it together. He gave the people examples of things to write. He helped them learn from history. I hope we can all learn more about the Constitution.
