Should children be taught politics in school?

english_bob

Fretwired said:

every political party will setup groups to target kids with their propaganda.

Not necessarily a bad thing. If the biased views are coming from people who are obviously biased, detecting bias becomes easier than if it's coming from someone who's supposed to be (but can't be, and won't be) unbiased.

Heartfeltdawn

Chalky said:

I think @CabbageCat's point was that the 'politics' syllabus could be nailed down. There isn't one for that topic yet.

Yes. It could be nailed down. But now we have the clear division between the community schools and the free/Academy system, what would be the point? 

Fretwired said:

^^ This

I did history at O level and that included the industrial revolution, the social impact of cities, the rise of the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party. It stopped with the Jarrow marchers. I was taught in the early 1970s. I think kids should learn this as it's important, although I would go as far as the 1970s with the abuse of power by the unions, the winter of discontent, the rise of Thatcher and the de-industrialisation of Britain.

I grew up under Thatcher, I lived in a Conservative county, and I was taught under a standardized curriculum at secondary comprehensive level from 1989 to 1994, a curriculum that was a real Tory flagship program (Ed Reform Act etc). We learnt nothing about British history and I have sod all grammar skills because of that education. 

Things we did get rammed down our throats: I learnt more about Judaism than any other religion, the greatest period of history was apparently the Cuban missile crisis and how communism was terrible, and the only economics we did was looking into free markets and how they were a good thing. 

Things we didn't learn about: the industrial revolution, the impact of WWII in bringing down the old social systems as personified by Gentlemen versus Players in cricket, grammar, decent mathematics, great British literature. 

Thanks, Tory educational system. 

CabbageCat

Heartfeltdawn said:

Chalky said:

I think @CabbageCat's point was that the 'politics' syllabus could be nailed down. There isn't one for that topic yet.

Yes. It could be nailed down. But now we have the clear division between the community schools and the free/Academy system, what would be the point? 

Fretwired said:

^^ This

I did history at O level and that included the industrial revolution, the social impact of cities, the rise of the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party. It stopped with the Jarrow marchers. I was taught in the early 1970s. I think kids should learn this as it's important, although I would go as far as the 1970s with the abuse of power by the unions, the winter of discontent, the rise of Thatcher and the de-industrialisation of Britain.

I grew up under Thatcher, I lived in a Conservative county, and I was taught under a standardized curriculum at secondary comprehensive level from 1989 to 1994, a curriculum that was a real Tory flagship program (Ed Reform Act etc). We learnt nothing about British history and I have sod all grammar skills because of that education. 

Things we did get rammed down our throats: I learnt more about Judaism than any other religion, the greatest period of history was apparently the Cuban missile crisis and how communism was terrible, and the only economics we did was looking into free markets and how they were a good thing. 

Things we didn't learn about: the industrial revolution, the impact of WWII in bringing down the old social systems as personified by Gentlemen versus Players in cricket, grammar, decent mathematics, great British literature. 

Thanks, Tory educational system. 

I guess you're the same age as me more-or-less (40 this year) and my state education sounds very different to yours. I'm pretty good on grammar and maths. Maybe it's just by comparison with others failed by John Major. Not so much with literature but I think that's more my failing than The System. My A-Level history teacher was an armchair revolutionary (he used to wear a Che Guevara tie) but he mostly only joked about that sort of thing. I came out of school as a lefty but then almost everyone does.

Sambostar

Modulus_Amps said:

If you are an immigrant and want to gain British citizenship you have to do the "living in the UK" test. The reading material for this test  covers the political system to some degree and I think everybody should have some understanding off it. It would be interesting to see how many British born people would fail that test, allot I think.

I must admit I have no idea how to make Spotted Dick, I imagine there is some flour and eggs in there somewhere.  Obviously though, I should be deported for not being British.

Heartfeltdawn

CabbageCat said:

I guess you're the same age as me more-or-less (40 this year) and my state education sounds very different to yours. I'm pretty good on grammar and maths. Maybe it's just by comparison with others failed by John Major. Not so much with literature but I think that's more my failing than The System. My A-Level history teacher was an armchair revolutionary (he used to wear a Che Guevara tie) but he mostly only joked about that sort of thing. I came out of school as a lefty but then almost everyone does.

Pretty much, 38 next month. My family moved from Hertfordshire to Wiltshire when I was 9 so I got a year and a bit in a Wiltshire primary school before secondary. What that showed me was how education varied across the country. I was computer programming and doing irregular fraction multiplication by the time I was 7 in a Hertfordshire state primary. When I came to Wiltshire, there was one computer spread over two schools, the mathematics was appalling, there were no English classes per se, and this carried on into secondary school. I can honestly say that there were things I was learning about the age of 8 in Hertfordshire that I didn't see until GCSE time. 

Myranda

Most adults don't understand politics...

they vote labour because their parents did... or because they're in a union or they're poor... no matter what the current Labour candidates are espousing as policy.

I know someone who even if Labour had a policy of murdering all first-born children would still say "yeah, but at least it's not conservative!... bloody toffs!" He doesn't care that the majority of Labour candidates are also from independently wealthy backgrounds, a number of them going to the same boarding schools and universities that make the conservatives toffs not in touch with reality.

People don't know what their local candidates stand for... people think they vote for Prime Ministers...

Now... yes education will help with this - but only if children are protected from The Media, Their Friends and Their Parents... those groups will fill them with enough BS that no matter what you tell them in school they will have already made up their minds.

Look at the Flat-Earth movement... you teach them maths, physics, geometry, you can show them photos take from space, you can show them the view from high up (say Mt Everest...) and they will still firmly believe that the world is flat and it's a conspiracy and you must be in on it... why do we think politics should be different?

I think kids should be taken from their parents at birth, and given back full of facts and truths then given back aged 20 ... then you can teach politics (from a standpoint of historical fact not media bias or parental hysteria) then we'd have a generation that could reach the stars... instead we'll have another 20 generations who at best can watch TV stars eat bugs

Heartfeltdawn

Myranda said:

Most adults don't understand politics...

they vote labour because their parents did... or because they're in a union or they're poor... no matter what the current Labour candidates are espousing as policy.

Yes, for years that was very true. But the longer New Labour stayed around, the more they resembled the Tories, and we saw this with last year's election, a Labour party of complete weakness. Not sufficiently neoliberal to appease the Blairite or to grab some Lid Dem voters, not left enough to make the unions happy, and ultimately so limp and insipid that they inspired nobody. 

A lot of MP's who end up as backbenchers stay in office for years because their electorate are voting for a local candidate rather than voting for a Prime Minister or Government. Dennis Skinner hasn't been around for so long because his supporters think he'll end up as PM or that he will wield influence in government. A good MP like Andrew Tyrie is the same for the Conservatives. 

Myranda

Heartfeltdawn said:

Myranda said:

Most adults don't understand politics...

they vote labour because their parents did... or because they're in a union or they're poor... no matter what the current Labour candidates are espousing as policy.

Yes, for years that was very true. But the longer New Labour stayed around, the more they resembled the Tories, and we saw this with last year's election, a Labour party of complete weakness. Not sufficiently neoliberal to appease the Blairite or to grab some Lid Dem voters, not left enough to make the unions happy, and ultimately so limp and insipid that they inspired nobody. 

A lot of MP's who end up as backbenchers stay in office for years because their electorate are voting for a local candidate rather than voting for a Prime Minister or Government. Dennis Skinner hasn't been around for so long because his supporters think he'll end up as PM or that he will wield influence in government. A good MP like Andrew Tyrie is the same for the Conservatives. 

And yet, my labour supporting friend still voted Labour, still saying "rather them than the Tories" and still harping on about Thatcher... 

As someone who has never been "wealthy" I'd love for there to be a proper labour party that is actually representative of the majority of people at the coal-face.

Instead we got a labour party who had no intention of being better for the people.

Heartfeltdawn

Myranda said:

And yet, my labour supporting friend still voted Labour, still saying "rather them than the Tories" and still harping on about Thatcher... 

Of course. There are still people who harp on about Thatcher being the evilest evil thing in evildom whilst giving Blair a pretty clean judgement. There is a word for these people: eejits.  

Myranda said:

Instead we got a labour party who had no intention of being better for the people.

For 2015, we got a Labour party who weren't really good enough for anyone bar themselves. They weren't neoliberal enough to make the business world cheerful, they weren't socialist enough to causes smiles to crack out in the old Marxist camps, they weren't far away enough from Blairism to escape his shadow, and they weren't good enough to convince their own supporters that they could win the competition. I don't think that they deliberately went out there with no intention of being good for the people: it's that they didn't know how to do it. 

From pink buses to enormous stones, it was a categoric disaster from start to finish and should have culminated in Harman, Milliband, and Balls all being locked inside a giant wicker Mandelson as the flames licked higher.  

KDS

scrumhalf said:

Come to think of it, make Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minster part of of the curriculum.

Was thinking of getting it for Jeremy Corbyn, thought it might be useful, but then realised he hasn't a TV.

littlegreenman

History O level for me (81-86) was Social and Economic History - 17thC up to WWII. Covered a lot of political themes along the way without any overt bias I remember.

We did also have a teacher who'd show after school 8mm presentations of The War Games, CND films and such like, so we had a fairly balanced view in the classroom, and the opportunity (or not) for exposure to that kind of thinking.

A geography teacher at the school (who was the personification of the teacher from The Wall) once stormed in and tore the reel off the projector showing a doc about the benefits of Communism from a Cuban perspective!

Good times

Freebird

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Freebird

I think you will find that with the new Common Core and Growth Mindset theories now being taught in schools, the kids will be getting primed with a hefty dose of communitarian ideology.

TheBlueWolf

Not current politics as there's a high chance of there being some bias from teachers, but the basics of how governments are run should be.

I'm not sure if critical thinking skills are currently taught but they should be, with an emphasis on students doing research before coming to a conclusion. We're all aware of spin and rhetoric from politicians, so developing minds that are able to filter the crap out would be good. Given the EU Referendum, where voters seemed to be clueless about what they were voting for, and that in the States Donald Trump is potentially a couple of months away from the most powerful job in the world, I'd like to see voters making the best choice based on all the available facts and not sleepwalking their way into a complete mess.

Drew_TNBD

Most kids don't understand maths or English. How about we fix those issues first?

Freebird

Drew_TNBD said:

Most kids don't understand maths or English. How about we fix those issues first?

Do you think this is an accident? 

Evilmags

The Road to Serfdom and Atlas Shrugged should be enough. 

Freebird

Evilmags said:

The Road to Serfdom and Atlas Shrugged should be enough. 

Ah, Ayn Rand who lived out her days on social security!

Evilmags

Freebird said:

Evilmags said:

The Road to Serfdom and Atlas Shrugged should be enough. 

Ah, Ayn Rand who lived out her days on social security!

Who took medicare for the last 3 years of her life. One suspects the tax revenues from the 10s of millions of book sales covered that cost several times over.