This pandemic proves why children need to be educated about politics

From Brexit buses to dodgy donors, lies pepper the political discourse like landmines. Young people need to know how to detect – and diffuse – them, writes Ellie Fishleigh

Boris Johnson on a visit to The Discovery School in West Malling, 20 July, 2020 (Getty Images)

It’s an unspoken truth that an understanding of politics is treated rather like an appreciation for olives: you’re expected to develop it over time, entirely of your own accord. But this generation of students needs politics on its plate from a much younger age.

Your exams were cancelled. Your parents are on furlough. You’re wearing a mask. But you can’t explain why.

Despite being on the receiving end of policy decisions that are changing both their everyday lives and their future prospects, young people are still expected to make sense of the world with a curriculum that leaves political education out of the equation. If ever there was an apt turning point, this pandemic is it.

The government and politics A-Level was taken by only around 18,000 students in 2019 – that’s barely half the number of people that follow the chair of the Education Select Committee on Twitter. The rest have no choice but to passively experience the consequences of these dramatic policy decisions, never having been taught how they are made or by whom.  

Unhelpfully, some hold the enduring misconception that teaching politics in schools is “wrong”. That by hosting classroom discussions on ideology or representation, children will somehow become radicalised into overthrowing the establishment. As though structured debates in a controlled classroom setting could be more harmful than the tsunami of politically charged material children invariably encounter online.

We now know that as few as 12 per cent of voters may account for 50 per cent of all social media users. In lieu of legitimate lessons, these ersatz orators fill the vacuum as the virtual supply teachers nobody asked for. What’s more, coronavirus conspiracy theories abound and bleach-loving castle-visiting U-turning politicians practically self-satirise at every turn. You can forgive people for struggling to tell fact from fiction.  

But the answer is not to shield students from controversial topics, as September’s RSE guidance attempted to do. From Brexit buses to dodgy donors, lies pepper the political discourse like landmines. Young people need to know how to detect – and diffuse – them. They must face politics head-on.

To do this, students must be armed with at least a basic knowledge of how our political system works, and a healthy scepticism towards information they read online. Teachers encourage their students to think critically about what they read, whether that’s geographical data or The Tempest. But without the vocabulary to comprehend the political world, their skills are neutered.  

Teachers are by no means to blame. Politics is a notoriously touchy subject to discuss amongst adults, let alone to teach to teenagers; you’d forgive a biologist for finding bicameralism a little outside their comfort zone! Resources do exist to make teaching political literacy much easier, such as the political and media literacy courses offered by Shout Out UK. But until this skill is rightfully reframed as essential, far too few students will benefit from them.

And those benefits would be manifold. Widespread political literacy is a promising antidote to voter apathy. Ipsos Mori data estimated 18-24 year olds’ turnout at the 2019 general election was 47 per cent, compared with 66 per cent of people between 55 and 64, and 74 per cent in the 65+ age bracket. Unsurprisingly, young people also reported lower levels of knowledge about politics than other age groups, were less likely to participate in political activities, or even be on the electoral register.

Yet the Hansard Society found that 18-24 year olds feel a need to gain more understanding of the system: whilst the majority of those they surveyed claim to know little or nothing about parliament, over half said they would like to know more.

With access to information about how our political system works, future generations can avoid this fate. Not only could they be equipped to make more informed decisions at the polling station, but to identify and counter that which might otherwise be obscured by ignorance or spin.

Of course, work is being done to try and “cure” us of the misinformation that already exists. Twitter removing a medically inaccurate tweet of Donald Trump’s is a memorable recent example. But one can’t help wondering whether that post would have attracted quite so many thousands of likes if his followers were better versed in the humble art of fact-checking.

Prevention, we say, is always better than a cure. Clearly, if removing patently false claims after they’ve been posted by the leader of the free world is the best “cure” we have, the need for a preventive speaks for itself. We are fighting not only the coronavirus pandemic, but an “infodemic” – neither will disappear of their own accord. For the latter plague at least, political literacy is the vaccine we need.

Ellie Fishleigh is a communications officer for social enterprise Shout Out UK