Mira Costa High Joins Banning in Winning Bicentennial Competition

Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach and Banning High in Wilmington are the South Bay winners of the second annual National Bicentennial Competition on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A panel of judges rated Mira Costa’s team highest in a competition Tuesday at North High in Torrance, and Banning won top honors earlier this month at another event on the Wilmington campus.

Winning teams from the two schools will go to Sacramento next month for the statewide competition. A national competition, won last year by California, is scheduled for April in Washington.

Paul Hawkins, a retired Torrance school administrator and volunteer coordinator for the competition, said the program gives young people a deeper appreciation of their constitutional rights and responsibilities.

“Youngsters find these competitions really exciting,” he said after the judges announced their decision at North High. “It was like a football game around here, with people cheering on their favorite teams.”

Competitions are organized by congressional districts. The students, usually from American government classes, operate in teams, spending several weeks studying the constitutional documents and their historical backgrounds to prepare for the oral tests given by judges, he said.

Mira Costa, which tied with North High in 1987 in the 27th Congressional District competition, won against North High and Torrance High this year. Banning, which won first place in the 32nd Congressional District in 1987, bested Long Beach Polytechnic High School this year, said Banning’s principal, Augie Herrera.

“The competition gives the students a better feeling for the country’s heritage, and it’s a lot of fun for everyone who gets involved,” the principal said.

Kyo Yamashiro, a 17-year-old North High senior who plans to major in political science in college, said the competition helped her “see the Constitution as a great document that shaped U.S. history.” She added, “It’s hard to imagine what the country would be like without the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Noting that only five South Bay schools participated this year, Hawkins said he hopes more will field teams in the 1989 competition. He said study materials that can be used in history courses are available to all private and public schools, regardless of whether they compete.

The program was established by Congress and the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and will run through 1991, the bicentennial of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. It was developed by the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit agency in Calabasas, and is administered by volunteer coordinators and congressional district offices.