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Hi
I would greatly appreciate if you would take a tiny bit of time to answer this survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P2ZS35M
After talking to a few people locally I realised that none of them had ever received any education on the British Political System and the parties involved at school. This surely cannot be good for our voting system and would possibly help explain why voting is going down, as people simply do not know who and what there voting for. If the results of the survey turn out the way I think they might I will try and take the issue up with the relevant Authorities.

I did A-Level Government and Politics and a year of it at Uni, along with Foreign Relations, so I am not exactly your target audience

That being said, I can't recall getting any political education prior to my A-Level choices, although I'm sure I must have at some point.

 Optio wrote:
Hi
I would greatly appreciate if you would take a tiny bit of time to answer this survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P2ZS35M
After talking to a few people locally I realised that none of them had ever received any education on the British Political System and the parties involved at school. This surely cannot be good for our voting system and would possibly help explain why voting is going down, as people simply do not know who and what there voting for. If the results of the survey turn out the way I think they might I will try and take the issue up with the relevant Authorities.

A low voter turbnout is described as a problem, but increased apathy amongst the population is what the current breed of politician actually wants.
Bread and circuses is more highly valued than education.

While not having political studies does cause some problems like the op described, opposition to it could be justified, as generally political teaching ends up being propaganda.

I wasn't taught anything until A-level government and politics.

 Sienisoturi wrote:
While not having political studies does cause some problems like the op described, opposition to it could be justified, as generally political teaching ends up being propaganda.

I've certainly thought about that as an issue but we had Ed Millaband come into my school a couple of years ago and he was only interested in the 6th Formers. Even the head master would happily admit he was only there to influence some more votes at the next election.

I had none at all until A-level, where the history course included a section on the foundation of British politics in the early C20.

Frankly, the lack of involvement of young people in politics in the UK is an absolute travesty. Until A-level, and even then only in Politics or History courses, there's no kind of political eduaction in the UK educational system, and this leaves people not wanting/bothering to vote as they don't really understand what they're actually voting for. If, in Citizenship lessons (or whatever the new term for those are) they actually taught a political grounding rather than mostly pointless rubbish we might get somewhere.

But, as pointed out above, that's largely in favour of the government. If this generation was involved in politics from an earlier age, then maybe the parties would actually have to revert to pursuing their ideologies instead of dithering about with vaguely centerist policies purely for the puropse of grabbing power.

Given the horriffic meddling governments do in education already, can you imagine the absolute clusterfeth thay would result from adding politics lessons throughout the school years?

Personally I did not get any lessons on politics or government (other than a little in history or geography when doscussing something which involved politics, such as the positions of countries and people prior to ww1 etc.

But if you could nail down a politician long enough to get more than slippery evasions and lies and build that into a series of lessons on politics then go ahead.

The only political education I received at school was closely linked in to history. It started with the Romans and all the political intrigue that came with them and went through to the start of WW1.

Which is a shame really because politics and war are so closely interlinked. I found it fascinating, but it was only given lip service compared to the actual teaching of history and historical figures.

Edit: I am actually from the UK, Dakka is only showing the Turkish flag because I'm in Istanbul at the moment....

There is an app "Ask Amy" at crowdfunder stage that should help ...hopefully it will be ready before the General Election

http://www.askamy.net/

Disenegagment of young people is a huge problem, but not just young people. We struggle to get over 70% of population to vote in a GE. Even in marginals, where voting makes a diffence turnout is rarely more than 70%

For other elections the turnouts are even lower. A few years ago we had a referendum on having a new voting system - AV - remember that? 42% turnout.

Its important to remember politics has two strands:
(1) what the parties stand for, how parties view various issues - which is what most people do not get
(2) the institutions and process of government

I suspect most people want more of (1) but that most A level courses are more of (2)

 SilverMK2 wrote:
But if you could nail down a politician long enough to get more than slippery evasions and lies and build that into a series of lessons on politics then go ahead.

Really, it should cover the following things:

Teach the principles of the system, so pupils become aware of exaclty what that cross in a box means and what effect it has. Teach them the ideas of a constituency, a parliament, a cabinet, a two-house system, a coalition ect. Basically defining terms and what's what.

Teach the founding ideologies of the parties in UK politics. Conservatives (Centre right), LibDems (Centre left), Labour (Left) , UKIP (Right, eurosceptic), Green (Slightly Left, Envinronmental issues). The issue here is that so much of the Party Politics that goes on today just abandons those principles (in fact, any principles) for the sake of gaining votes. So either the parties would have to revert closer to those ideologies, or the system would ultimately creatre pressure from the next generation of voters to do so.

The most important, and conversely most difficult, part, would be to teach in an unbiased manner the concepts of right/left wing government and what that would mean for the electorate, so that future voters can actually place themselves somewhere on a political spectrum and identify with a certain party ideology through that. However, this would need a balance in teaching which would be hard to achieve, as it would be fundamentally wrong for someone in a position to educate to convey their own beliefs on what is good/bad in politics. If someone wants to identify with an extreme left wing, they should be able to do so without fear of being told that's wrong, and similarly with the right, although emphasis would then need to be placed on seperating right-wing political views which can be fine from simply wrong extreme right social views (racism and the like).

This would, of course, require a huge change at every level, but is certainly something I would like to see.

 Paradigm wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
But if you could nail down a politician long enough to get more than slippery evasions and lies and build that into a series of lessons on politics then go ahead.

Really, it should cover the following things:

Teach the principles of the system, so pupils become aware of exaclty what that cross in a box means and what effect it has. Teach them the ideas of a constituency, a parliament, a cabinet, a two-house system, a coalition ect. Basically defining terms and what's what.

Teach the founding ideologies of the parties in UK politics. Conservatives (Centre right), LibDems (Centre left), Labour (Left) , UKIP (Right, eurosceptic), Green (Slightly Left, Envinronmental issues). The issue here is that so much of the Party Politics that goes on today just abandons those principles (in fact, any principles) for the sake of gaining votes. So either the parties would have to revert closer to those ideologies, or the system would ultimately creatre pressure from the next generation of voters to do so.

The most important, and conversely most difficult, part, would be to teach in an unbiased manner the concepts of right/left wing government and what that would mean for the electorate, so that future voters can actually place themselves somewhere on a political spectrum and identify with a certain party ideology through that. However, this would need a balance in teaching which would be hard to achieve, as it would be fundamentally wrong for someone in a position to educate to convey their own beliefs on what is good/bad in politics. If someone wants to identify with an extreme left wing, they should be able to do so without fear of being told that's wrong, and similarly with the right, although emphasis would then need to be placed on seperating right-wing political views which can be fine from simply wrong extreme right social views (racism and the like).

This would, of course, require a huge change at every level, but is certainly something I would like to see.

This is exactly what I mean and feel were its going wrong as atm none of this seems to be put across. Speaking to older generations as well nobody had anything like this.

I am glad I had no political education whilst at school. I'm fairly certain that such teaching would have put me off politics and voting.

As for people not knowing who or what they are voting for. You can lead a horse to water and all that jazz....

Define "school". Do you mean anywhere from Primary through to College/Sixth Form? Including College/Sixth Form? Up to and including Uni?

Anything prior to Uni.

Don't worry, in the US we get it at the university level.

And the phrase we use is "liberal indoctrination"

 cincydooley wrote:
Don't worry, in the US we get it at the university level.

And the phrase we use is "liberal indoctrination"

In Europe we would call that "not pants on head right wing"

In that case, I took AS level politics in college. That was the only time during my education that I was ever taught about politics, but unfortunately my mental health necessitated my dropping out of college after only 4 months. In the lessons I remember, we only covered the voting systems and a small amount of political history. I did, however, note a distinct Conservative bias in the teachings in that the Conservative party was covered in far more detail than Labour or the Lib Dems, both of which were pretty much glossed over.

I also don't remember covering perhaps the most well-known part of Conservative history: the miner's strike. It was definitely mentioned as a significant part of political history, but it wasn't given much attention past "it happened".

When I taught in the UK, I taught "lifeskills" and Political Social Health Education as two of my subjects to kids from KS3 to KS4.

I'd have to say that the useful content of those modules was pretty low, and we did very little about how the political system worked. The most I was able to do was talk to kids about it around elections and explain the process a bit, but that was "off curriculum" and I probably would have been punished for it if I'd been observed doing it.

I felt that education in the UK suffered quite badly from a large amount of political interference, so I would worry about the curriculum if such a course was made more widespread than A Level where kids are better critical thinkers anyway.

I did a fair bit of political education at prep school, where we held mock elections in election year -- it must have been 1973 -- and did projects on the different parties, leaders (my topic -- I did badly) and so on.

Obviously this was before the EU.

In Canadurr, the political system was explained in detail in junior high school. The Queen is the head of state, her representative is the Gov. General (appointed by the Prime Minister) and the PM is the leader of the party which held the most seats in Parliament. The whole system at the provincial level mirrors the federal level with the titles taking on different names.

Unfortunately, what they neglected to mention was that the majority of successful ("successful" being the key word) politicians, regardless of party or leaning, are self-serving egotists who'd gladly sell their own mother for political office and the gold plated pension that comes with it.

Sorry. Had to get my political atheist views out there. Carry on.

None

Self educated man

I had no such education in politics but I think a lot of children in very event times now do classes in 'health and social development' or some such description that deal a lot in teaching understanding and tolerance of different groups and various issues. I imagine some politics is included there, or easily could be. Generally politics is best kept away from the classroom for fear of appearing partisan. It's hard enough teaching sex education without accusations that telling pupils how to use a condom is equivalent to encouraging them to have sex.

Covered the basics in History in relation to Marxism, Lenin's Russia and Cold War, along with early 20th Century Ireland and Britain
My school is naturally right wing slanted, with unspecified censorship towards social media and criticising the policies and such. Speaking to friends or families on Twitter for example (a private twitter conversation at that) is serverly punished, and was done last year to a friend of mine because one teacher was being a douche and he moaned on Facebook on his own page. Its practically Nazi Germany v2. In fact, the principal is regularly referred to as Da Fuhrer. Or Janet as opposed ti Ms Williamson or Ma'am. And there is a running joke that when we are required to stand as she enters that someone has to Hitler salute and shout "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" No one has the gonads just yet.

None until A level equivalent. And even then the mechanics of FPTP or the mechanics of the House of Lords were only a small part of it.

When I was considering being a teacher a few years back, I wandered into a GCSE Citizenship class and saw them pushing how wonderful the EU was, what it supposedly did for us, and why it was a good thing. It was the first time I've ever seen any type of contemporary political issue raised in a classroom of 14 year olds, and it was so biased and cackhandedly taught that it disgusted me.

I have no faith in the educational system's ability to teach anything about politics. Kids should be taught how to vote, possibly given an array of literature from all parties, and left to work the rest out themselves.

 Ketara wrote:


I have no faith in the educational system's ability to teach anything about politics. Kids should be taught how to vote, possibly given an array of literature from all parties, and left to work the rest out themselves.

This is the best solution.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I had no such education in politics but I think a lot of children in very event times now do classes in 'health and social development' or some such description that deal a lot in teaching understanding and tolerance of different groups and various issues. I imagine some politics is included there, or easily could be.

It could be, but in my experience those lessons were spent either dithering about with pointless rubbish, or watching films. I know no one who ever took it seriously, mainly because even the teachers didn't.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I had no such education in politics but I think a lot of children in very event times now do classes in 'health and social development' or some such description that deal a lot in teaching understanding and tolerance of different groups and various issues. I imagine some politics is included there, or easily could be.

It could be, but in my experience those lessons were spent either dithering about with pointless rubbish, or watching films. I know no one who ever took it seriously, mainly because even the teachers didn't.

I'm not sure how old you are, but when I was young we had PSHE in tutor time which was pretty poor. In the last school I was working at as an adult going into teaching, Citizenship classes were specifically timetabled with dedicated staff.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I had no such education in politics but I think a lot of children in very event times now do classes in 'health and social development' or some such description that deal a lot in teaching understanding and tolerance of different groups and various issues. I imagine some politics is included there, or easily could be.

It could be, but in my experience those lessons were spent either dithering about with pointless rubbish, or watching films. I know no one who ever took it seriously, mainly because even the teachers didn't.

I'm not sure how old you are, but when I was young we had PSHE in tutor time which was pretty poor. In the last school I was working at as an adult going into teaching, Citizenship classes were specifically timetabled with dedicated staff.

They still are, at least at my school. Except that he is right. It was just taken for granted that Period 4 on a Thursday said "Personal Development (Free Period)."