B465 - Politics Education Bill
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillWhy into the history curriculum? And why only 12 weeks of compulsory politics in secondary schools? I support the idea, but this doesn't go far enough for me - I'd rather have politics/political philosophy as a compulsory subject from 11 to 16. Also, what is the voting age in TSR land? Might be worth making it 16 with this if it isn't already.
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillTrust me - PHSE is crap - this is the best way. An hour a week is not substantial enough and History and Politics are quite closely tied, so that is why they are together. I'm not sure if creating another subject is the best idea with things like Maths and English hours per week are the lowest they have been for decades.
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillI guess so, yes(Original post by barnetlad)
Will the MRLP be one of the parties being included in the curriculum?
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Re: B465 - Politics Education Billagreed, but maybe swap it for PSHE? we're not gonna interest people who don't give a damn and aren't interested at all, whereas an hour a week should attract anyone who is gonna be interested in it. Then its an option subject at GCSE so there's an opportunity to do more at that stage(Original post by MacCuishy)
Trust me - PHSE is crap - this is the best way. An hour a week is not substantial enough and History and Politics are quite closely tied, so that is why they are together. I'm not sure if creating another subject is the best idea with things like Maths and English hours per week are the lowest they have been for decades. -
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillI agree with this. It should come under citizenship / PSHCE (however it was abbreviated at your school). Rather than watering down History.(Original post by Birchington)
I would prefer to see political studies integrated into the current curriculum for citizenship and PSHE rather than diluting the history curriculum. -
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillPolitics should not be taught in secondary schools. My history teacher was a Marxist, he could've easily been a conservative. Either way you're getting a bias. There are more creative ways to engage y00f in politics - bastardising history is not appropriate. There's already too little history in history.
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillI believe that Politics should be taught in secondary schools but it should be integrated with the current statutory Citizenship GCSE curriculum - there is already a unit on how Bills/Laws make Parliaments and a bit on the political parties and democracy. This bill should make it that it's an extension of the GCSE Citizenship curriculum to have pupils taught about politics and have debates etc...
Its a no from me at the moment. -
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillPolitics should be a separate class taught by a different teacher each week to gain a new perspective. Guests should also come in and give their views as having views from a single professional would be bias.
Last edited by internetguru; 18-06-2012 at 13:44. -
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillWhere would this time come from? There isn't any. History and Politics are very closely related - both you have to understand and explain actions.
I personally think it would fit in nicely, as PHSE is basically a massive doss of a lesson -
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillAye to PSHE, nay to History. You can't force anyone to be interested in anything at all and I believe introducing political education in schools would be much the same. Until a few years ago a language was compulsory at GCSE level, yet most can't say anything in French beyond "bonjour, ça va".
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Re: B465 - Politics Education BillPolitics can't be taught at such a level and make someone a better voter because of their knowledge, just going to copy the same **** I said in libertarian sub.
If you're aim is to make children aware of issues, that's easy but unnecessary. This is what news or leaflets by the various parties are for. I don't see how having classes listing X party stands Y when it comes to Z is beneficial or necessary. Now, if you want to make them better voters, that's necessary but hard. You might want to do this via giving children the opportunities to debate the issues. But, how is that helping? Children won't have the necessary critical thinking abilities to benefit from debating and it will merely be a battle of the best rhetorician. Similar to the public, children will still vote based on external factors like popularity, smartness or their families voting patterns/opinions.
What issues will children be able to comprehend? They won't have the necessary background to tackle any economic problems and economic problems aren't straight forward e.g. minimum wage where you get a lot of contradictory opinions and studies. Approaches to social problems like crime or welfare are partly influenced by economics. It's useless telling children conservatives will cut welfare budget is useless. It comes down to a question on whether you support austerity.
You could say that you'd look more at the social side of approaches e.g. rehabilitation vs punishment, minimum standard of living ec cetera. But, we run into a problem here as well. How will you go about answering rehabilitation vs punishment? You can't use America or Norway as examples of different systems because there are too many socioeconomic factors (inequality levels, crime, youth culture etc) that make comparisons pointless. There are no two countries that have similar socioeconomic factors yet take different approaches for us to use as valid comparisons. Also, again we can't escape economics. Norway, has a higher GDP per capita than the US hence can afford to spend more.
The question will rely on ethics and ethics isn't a easy field as well. It will merely be case of children working based on their moral principles established via either religious conviction or upbringing e.g. someone whose religion teaches forgiveness will be more willing to side with rehabilitation than a Muslim whose been brought up to see punishment as a method and not question it because it comes from God who is a moral authority. Allowing children to work from these moral framework as opposed to question it makes this useless. Hence we will have to teach meta-ethics. Meta-ethics is far too complicated for children and to appreciate they'll need an understanding of formal logic (assessing arguments) and moral psychology.
I just can't see how this will work. My recommendation, critical thinking classes (teaching logical fallacies and congtivie biases to help children understand how people come to voting opinions and avoid this and teach importance of scientific method) as well as logic classes to help the assess arguments. That will do much more to help make children better voters than these politics classes.
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