Election reflections.

Politics is about issues and attitudes.  This last few weeks I feel we have lost focus on this and it has become about winning, losing and arithmetic. There are some interesting things being discussed now in the Labour Party as they consider their leader and the Green Party certainly ran their campaign based on a world view. But for too long politics seems to have been focussed on the game, rather than the rules.
In my experience students engage with issues, want to hear different points of view and commonly have strong opinions of their own. This supports research published in TES here which reveals that teenagers really care about politics. In my classroom since September this interest has arisen almost every week. On the Friday after the election, Year 11 students who were in the midst of final preparations of exams arrived in the room excitedly telling me 'he's resigned', 'it's totally different now' and 'I can't believe it, none of us wanted him'. Evidence from social media also suggests that young people, in particular teenagers, have really engaged with the election, and feel frustrated that they can't vote. A recent example from my classroom include Year 10 who were considering the death penalty. The issue was then what is the purpose of punishment and therefore prison. Students were fiercely engaged, so much so that we had to push back the next lesson to allow more time for debate.
Similarly Year 11 have been assessing support and opposition for the establishment of the NHS as they revise for GCSE History. The issue was then should the government or individuals be responsible for insuring against sickness as well as the role of private finance.  It provoked much discussion again, this time about Labour policies and student perceptions of the health service and their understanding of the views of the two main parties.
There are dozens of further examples I could share but clearly young people in education are engaged in politics. Whether our representatives continue to focus on playing a game and just attempting to win votes rather than engage in debate can in part, I believe, be directly affected by our classrooms focussing on issues that matter. As the dust settles on the election and we return to the clichéd priorities of 'reducing the deficit' and 'hard working families' I, for one, will continue to give opportunities for young people to engage with important issues and attitudes.