She jotted this down dutifully, then looked at him expectantly.

"Miss Gonzales, I admire your courage in admitting you need help. Most students don't admit it until it's too late. But just what is it that you don't understand? You have thought about the topics you have read and heard about in class, haven't you?"

"I read and hear, but nothing resonates," she complained. "I just can't relate to any of this."

"All right, let's take an example. Have you thought about why the founding fathers put into the Constitution that there would be no state religion? You don't believe they were atheists, do you?"

"No, of course not. I guess they just wanted to keep religion out of politics."

"But if everybody at the time was either Protestant or Catholic, why not just make Christianity the state religion?"

"Because there might be other religions later on, maybe?"

"I seriously doubt that they had good enough crystal balls to predict what a melting pot we would become. Your first answer was better. You let me distract you. Focus on that first answer. Why would we want to keep religion out of politics? Or politics out of religion, for that matter?"

"I guess they didn't want the state to tell people what to believe."

"Possibly. But if everybody believes in the same thing, why not just say it so it would always stay that way?"