CUMMING, Ga. – Students across Georgia are receiving pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution, courtesy of the American Legion, local businesses and other civic-minded groups.

Georgia State Superintendent of Schools Richard Woods told WSB-TV 2 he believes testing and other priorities have supplanted civics and patriotism in many schools, so he solicited help from local groups, including the American Legion in Cumming, to purchase pocket Constitutions for every fourth grade student in Georgia.

“Talking about what it means to be an American, the greatness of our history, perhaps got pushed aside,” said Woods, a Republican and former history teacher.

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Veterans doled out the first round of Constitutions at Midway Elementary in Forsyth County Thursday and plan to continue the effort for thousands more students in the coming weeks.

“I was pretty excited because I had never read the Constitution before,” one student told the news site.

The tiny books also include the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Now I know what the preamble actually is,” another student said.

Woods said the goal of the initiative is very simple.

“Hopefully as we begin to roll this out they will become informed citizens, but also engaged citizens take every opportunity to vote and speak,” he said.

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Teacher Ellen Long seems to think the free Constitutions are great idea.

“I think it says we really want our fourth graders to understand U.S. history and understand the freedoms we have and where they come from so they can be good American citizens,” she said.

The initiative leads up to the national Constitution Day on Sept. 17, the same day the Constitution was signed in 1787, and schools that receive federal funding are required by law to teach about the Constitution.

For many schools, that means handing out pocket Constitutions. And for the Nelson family, which distributes most of them from a warehouse in Idaho, business is booming, The Washington Post reported last September.

Zeldon Nelson, CEO of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, operates the warehouse where his 27 grandchildren help him to distribute the booklets – sold for $1.10 each. And he told the Post he has no plans to retire.

“From this area of the country, we say we are going to die in the saddle!” he said.

Others, like Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, have pointed out that the mini Constitutions send a message beyond the basic principles that founded America.

“It’s symbolic of the very idea that the basic rules that govern the interactions of 300 million of us can be reduced to a text short enough that we could all carry it with us,” he told the Post. “That we could all actually read it if we wanted to.”

The document also literally changed the world, he said.

“In 1787, the world was dominated by kings, emperors, czars, tribal chiefs and thugs,” the constitutional scholar said. “And now, half of it has democracies inspired by the American model.”