Boys State Contest
What’s “Boys State”?
The American Legion Boys State session is sponsored and funded by the American Legion Department of California and the individual American Legion Posts participating. Approximately 960 young men from all over the state attend this weeklong session. The session lasts for seven days and is hosted by the California State University Sacramento. The session will include visiting the California State Capitol and meet with the Assembly and with the Governor. At the conclusion of the session, a governor and a senator are elected to represent the session. Also, the session elects two senators to attend the American Legion Boys Nation Program. The individuals selected as senators will travel to Washington DC and meet with Congress and the President of the United States.
As a program of The American Legion, Boys State developed from the concept that youth should be offered a better perspective of the practical operation of government; that the individual is an integral part and commensurately responsible for the character and success of his government. As such, it is an activity of high educational value, born out of a need for youth training in practical citizenship.
American Legion Boys State is easily classified as a leadership action program where qualified male high school juniors take part in a practical government course designed to develop in the young citizens a working knowledge of the structure of government and to impress upon them the fact that government is just what they make it.
Objectives and Goals
A program of this scope encompasses many important objectives. Those which we, The American Legion, feel are most important and for which we strive the hardest are:
- To develop civic leadership and pride in American citizenship.
- It is our earnest hope that each young man attending a Boys State will return to his community a better citizen and that we will have aroused in him a desire to demonstrate this fact by his willingness to make civic contributions that will help to make his community a better place in which to live.
- To arouse a keen interest in the detailed study of our government.
- Here we desire to create more than just a passive interest in the actual study of government; we strive to create an interest that will be born of the desire for knowledge.
- To develop an understanding of American traditions and belief in the United States of America.
- Here we desire to impress upon the young men the glorious traditions which have made this country what it is today.
- To arouse in the young citizens a determination to maintain our form of government.
- This we attempt to accomplish in many ways but primarily by bringing them into the full realization of how wonderful it is to be an American!
Boys Nation
http://www.legion.org/programs/youthprograms/boystate
Two outstanding representatives from each of 49 Boys States are called upon to represent their state at American Legion Boys Nation in Washington, DC. It is here that the young leaders, who had excelled at their respective Boys States, are introduced to the structure and function of the federal government.
