Teaching young citizens about politics: Lessons from a political education workshop with primary school students

A guest blog from Rosie Beacon, the Centre for Global Youth intern

I found myself increasingly frustrated during the EU referendum campaign and the aftermath to see my friends and peers making very opinionated and quite inflammatory statements, often using information that was factually incorrect or lacking context. I always wondered if they’d been taught always politics at school whether they might think differently, or maybe less harshly. To explore this theory, in October of last year I started a project called Politeach and, along with a team of fellow volunteers, designed an interactive political education workshop for Key Stage 2 pupils. I was unsure how to go about doing this, but thankfully, UCL Volunteering Services Unit (VSU) gave me the tools to help Politeach to come to life.

Why did I feel the need to actively involve myself in political education?

I’ve been dissatisfied with the political education system since I left school, and I think it will always be a pressing issue for numerous reasons. Firstly, it is difficult to reconcile voter apathy with such low levels of political literacy. Secondly, social media has become the best worst nightmare for politics. While it can be a world of opportunity for engaging new audiences, it can also influence people into thinking a certain way when they’re not equipped to challenge it, making it just as much of a liability as an opportunity. And lastly, politics can be simplified to an easily digestible level that not only encourages pupils to understand political mechanisms but also stimulates debate and reasoning skills, which is an indispensable skill in any discipline, not just politics. It is these reasons that inspired me to get stuck into political education myself.

What did Politeach involve?

Politeach is a two-hour workshop designed for Key Stage 2 pupils. It is role-play based and entirely hypothetical so there is no association to real-life political parties, which, we believe, gives the students a sense of agency over their decisions whilst simultaneously learning about how the government works.

The workshop is based around three main activities:

1. Party selection, Election of Party leaders and Election of Government
   The students are organised into small groups of 10, which are then further sub-divided into an Orange Party and a Blue Party. Each party then chooses a party leader, writes a manifesto (we give them a list of policy options and they choose which options they would like) and a mini election speech. This activity culminates in a general election to decide a government.
2. House of Commons debate
   After some preparation time, the new government and the opposition party then debate their party platforms.
3. Referendum
   The entire class comes together for this section, which is usually done outside. The entire workshop is orchestrated so that every party has one manifesto pledge that is the same (e.g. every Orange Party has ‘Longer break times instead of going home early’ and every Blue Party has ‘Going home early instead of longer break times’. We close the debate section at an inconclusive point to try and demonstrate how political decisions can be taken to a referendum when politicians cannot decide. When outside, volunteer teachers hold up signs saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and the pupils have to run to the side they agree with.

Design and delivery: the obstacles

While Politeach was a very successful initiative, it was not without obstacles. When attempting an education initiative in particular, it is imperative to do as much planning as possible. That said, Politeach was constantly changing, and even during the workshop we were adding things in here and there, in addition to meticulous planning leading up to the delivery.

With a workshop structure in particular it is of utmost importance to be flexible. This is applicable at all stages of planning. We actually started out Politeach planning to do 8-10 lessons in one school over a term, an idea I initially preferred because I thought it then seemed like politics was a proper lesson and not an extra-curricular activity. However, we soon realised this was borderline impossible; schools do not have the time or resources to delegate this sort of time. Once we adjusted to a workshop design, the actual delivery also required flexibility. Since the main benefit of a workshop is that you arrive, you teach, you leave, this means that you end up in a variety of different environments and have to shape the workshop accordingly to that school. This involves taking into account what the general attainment is at that school, how much politics is taught internally, the class size, the classroom size and how receptive the pupils are.

Moreover, it was my worst fear to have a bunch of disenchanted students and an uncomfortable on-looking teacher during the workshop. This is partially why the workshop is so role-play based, to give the pupils a sense of responsibility instead of being passive observers to a twenty slide PowerPoint on elections. The last thing we wanted was for us to be talking at the students for two hours. If I’m completely honest, I’d rather the pupils not learn a huge amount about the granular details of the political structure and instead, associate politics as something interesting and stimulating which they can play an active role in. So the workshop has a basic structure of replicating the political process, but it also exists to show that politics is not boring, it’s not just for adults, and is relatively easy to get engaged in because the fundamental structure of politics is debating over something you believe in, which you can practice at almost any age.

An additional factor to take into account when teaching political education in particular, is non-partisan teaching. By nature, the workshop is inherently non-partisan because the parties and manifesto options are completely hypothetical and there is very little room for political indoctrination. However, politics is characterised by subjectivity and it should not be underestimated how often the notion of ‘all political education is a form of indoctrination’ is entertained. In practice, particularly with Politeach, it’s very difficult to even imply some sort of party association as there is no way it could be brought in in relation to the content of the workshop. With this said, the volunteers might not say something biased but the pupils certainly can. We were shocked at how much some students knew in regards to party politics. In this situation we had to think of different ways of dealing with political opinions, without expressing our own political view, but still encouraging them and other students to deconstruct a judgement and try and think of a counter-argument.

What is the future for Politeach?

I find it bizarre that the main source of political education for this generation comes from their own research, despite huge decisions like Brexit and the day-to-day decisions made in the government affecting them just as much as anyone else. Politics in its most fundamental form can be quite simple to teach and it can be exciting and enjoyable too. Particularly in the current political climate, pupils are even more receptive and eager to understand what is actually going on while buzzwords of Brexit, single market, immigration, and the NHS are constantly thrown around. Politeach will continue to run next year as a student-led project in the VSU, hopefully going into more schools. However, in an ideal world, Politeach should not be necessary because of a long term, integrated political education system in the main curriculum. Until then however, I hope Politeach, other social enterprises and pressure groups of a similar orientation fill the gaps that the current education system fails to provide.