Penny Letters

After years of students writing about it, it is time for the penny to go

USA Today

The penny is finally singing its swan song. Suffice it to say that while there is virtually nothing I like about the current administration, I am in agreement that it is time for the penny to go. Many of my former students would also concur that it is time. As a high school Government teacher, in a lesson on federalism, for years I had an assignment for seniors to write a letter to some (appropriate) level of government about any issue that they cared about. Many chose to write about ending the production of the penny as essentially a default option for a topic. Making currency was my sample issue of something that the federal government had the power to do, so many of them chose to write about the penny because they could not think of anything else or were avoiding controversy. I told them, “if you can’t think of something else to write about, you can write about the penny.” They could write about keeping that coin if they wished, but none of them did. Long before it hit the federal front burner, our local congress members were probably wondering why they were receiving so many “penny letters.”

All of this was a way to teach students about the concept of federalism. In our country, we have multiple levels of government due to the constitutional division of powers between the national government and the states. We studied the difference between delegated, implied, shared, and reserved powers in our constitutional system. Given that we have so many governments, it is sometimes confusing to determine which level of government does what? Is your issue federal, state, or local? This is one of the most confusing things for students, and most citizens, to understand. When you say you want “the government” to do something about something, which government are you talking about? The challenge of this assignment was to write to the correct representative. One would not contact Congress about traffic on a local street. One would not write to the Town government about foreign policy. Applying what we learned, the students had to write to the proper level of government for their issue.

We spent many days studying the powers of each level of government. A key point was that some federal powers are delegated specifically only to the national government (“delegated powers”) and are directly enumerated in the Constitution. An example of this is coining money. Only the federal government may do this. One of the problems of the early Articles of Confederation was that each state was printing its own currency. This brought about the need for a stronger central government and a constitutional convention in 1787. So, as a sample of an issue regarding delegated powers, I brought up the concerns about the penny. It was the least controversial issue that I could think of.

It costs more than a penny to make a penny. Wikipedia notes that “It costs more than one cent to produce a penny, leading to a negative seigniorage (the difference between the face value of a coin and its production cost).” The government loses money on every penny that it mints. Wikipedia also notes the lack of circulation and inconvenience of the penny. Canada stopped making its one cent coin years ago.

Students were told they could write to any level of government about any issue they wished and take any position. The goal here was to learn one of the key skills of a citizen. Students were not graded on their position or opinion, but on the effectiveness of the letter—it is ineffective to write to the wrong person. The most important objective was that they send it to the right person--their own representative at the proper level of government. Letters were to be in the suitable business format, dated and signed, and in a properly addressed envelope with a stamp. They would be actually mailed out.

Most students had an opinion about something. There were letters going out to the state representatives about the cost of higher education. There were letters sent to County government about the building of a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Yet, a plurality of students chose to write about the penny, probably because of its non-controversial nature. Who is pro penny? Coin collectors? People who own stock in zinc mines? Our congressman was inundated with penny letters twice a year--once each semester. Nothing budged for years, though. Now, the Treasury will cease producing more pennies after the last batch of “blanks” has been used up.

Although most letters probably did not bring students satisfaction about their issue, it is not to say that the assignment was ineffective. Most students got some sort of response, even if it was automated. Sometimes, though, they got real action. One kid wrote to Town government about having sidewalks put in front of our school. Remarkably, for decades, our high schoolers who came to school on foot had to walk in the street. Finally, a town representative chose to use a student’s letter to illustrate the problem and actually work to get this done. The student, who was just writing the letter to satisfy an assignment, was interviewed on television as the sidewalk construction crew got busy.

On another occasion, the Town Supervisor asked to come to speak to our class about an issue that had spawned many letters--a local playground needed replacement. When his assistant called me to set up the meeting, I asked how they knew it was a class assignment. She said that twice a year they got a lot of letters about some issue or other--more than they usually got. She also noted that the letters were spelled correctly, which was not something they found with the general public.

For many of the students, this was also the first time that they had ever written a letter or even addressed an envelope. I know this because some of them submitted the letter with the stamp upside down or placed in the middle of the envelope. As awkward as the task was for some of them, at the very least, the students were exercising their first amendment freedom of petition for a “redress of grievances.”