Young people and politics

junii

Im fairly young and next year Id say I will vote for the first time.

Do a high percentage of young ppl vote in Ireland?
Is there any other country that has a much high percentage than any other? If so, why is it that they have a higher percentage?

Nevyn

Well do make sure that you are on the register to vote, you can do so by applying at your local garda station or library.

Really voting should be taught in schools as part of a person civic duty and well should be lower to the age of 16 as far as I am concerned, if you are old enought at 16 to work and pay tax then you should be old enough to vote and have a say in how that tax money is spent.

junii

Thaedydal wrote:

Well do make sure that you are on the register to vote, you can do so by applying at your local garda station or library.

Really voting should be taught in schools as part of a person civic duty and well should be lower to the age of 16 as far as I am concerned, if you are old enought at 16 to work and pay tax then you should be old enough to vote and have a say in how that tax money is spent.

You could teach voting as part of a civic duty in school.

To be honest though I did absolutely rubbish in school and not because they didn't teach stuff, it was because they didn't make it life relevant. I came out into the world after school without a bloody clue (I still don't have a clue btw) but
I have found that I have become interested in many things in the real world such as business and politics simply because I have learnt how they actually work. If they had taught me how stuff worked in school I would have gone to college and been finished this year. Instead, im still fcking around waiting to hopefully go as a mature student when im 23.

So yeah, if they had taught me why we should vote and these are the county councils and this is there function and the dail does this et cetera et cetera, young ppl would have more appreciation of this country and strive to make it better from a younger age and perhaps behave more responsibly.

Or maybe im just completely naive in thinking that you can teach this. Maybe you always have to learn things the hard way to make them get through but a little help wouldn't go afar...

nikolaitr

From my experience, the youth are not interested in Irish Politics. For the most part it is far to boring on par with international politics.

Cantab.

nikolaitr wrote:

From my experience, the youth are not interested in Irish Politics. For the most part it is far to boring on par with international politics.

They'll soon become interested when they realise that your average young person hoping to make a modest life for themselves by working in an average job, is mortgaged up to their eyeballs for 35 years, is commuting 3-4 hours a day and is paying 42% tax whilst company directors and those in the know are milking the economic success for themselves.

Why anyone would take a job working as a PAYE worker in say, a multinational organisation, is beyone me. Stick to the public sector or set up your own company and avail of the tax benefits.

Bards

Cantab. wrote:

Why anyone would take a job working as a PAYE worker in say, a multinational organisation, is beyone me. Stick to the public sector or set up your own company and avail of the tax benefits.

Becuase most of the public sector jobs are in Dublin, and not everyone wants to live and work in Dublin

Maybe the problem is on the supply side. Low voter turnout among the youth may be due to the fact the main parties are so similar. Why bother voting if the resultant government and their policies are going to be very similar regardless? Low turnout in local elections may be due to fact that centralistation of power has left local authorities impotent compared to many other western democracies. Maybe the system not young people is the problem.

Villain

I think one of reasons young people have little to no insterest in politics is because not many potential TD's have a mandate they can relate to. It's like a vicious cycle, young people don't vote because TD's don't have a mandate that they can relate to because they don't look beyond the next year or two and TD's don't spend too much trying to get the youth onside because they reckon they won't turn out on voting day.

Elections are all abouts tactics and knowing what group of voters will actually go out and vote for you and the TD's are very good at concentrating on those groups rather than appealing to groups of people who won't bother voting no matter what you sell them.

seamus

It's pretty par for the course that young people rarely see the relevance of voting - up to a certain age, many are still in college or are being supported (either fully or partly) by their parents, so the decisions of the politicians have little effect on them.

I think the fact that politics doesn't feature no the Irish curriculum (or at least didn't when I was in school) doesn't help either - very few people would know how the Oireachtas is structured, what voting someone in actually means, and how bills are presented and passed. I know I only have a slight knowledge of this. The constitution isn't even discussed in school, yet they expect voters to be informed enough to vote in referenda?

Hotblack Desiato

Bards wrote:

Becuase most of the public sector jobs are in Dublin, and not everyone wants to live and work in Dublin

Rubbish. Even before the current decentralisations were announced, most public servants already were based outside Dublin. Don't forget teachers, Gardai, doctors, nurses are public servants too.

junii

irish1 wrote:

I think one of reasons young people have little to no insterest in politics is because not many potential TD's have a mandate they can relate to. It's like a vicious cycle, young people don't vote because TD's don't have a mandate that they can relate to because they don't look beyond the next year or two and TD's don't spend too much trying to get the youth onside because they reckon they won't turn out on voting day.

Elections are all abouts tactics and knowing what group of voters will actually go out and vote for you and the TD's are very good at concentrating on those groups rather than appealing to groups of people who won't bother voting no matter what you sell them.

If young people were interested in politics and did vote, I wonder what kind of things they would want and what politicians would do for them.

seamus

seamus wrote:

It's pretty par for the course that young people rarely see the relevance of voting - up to a certain age, many are still in college or are being supported (either fully or partly) by their parents, so the decisions of the politicians have little effect on them.

I think the fact that politics doesn't feature no the Irish curriculum (or at least didn't when I was in school) doesn't help either - very few people would know how the Oireachtas is structured, what voting someone in actually means, and how bills are presented and passed. I know I only have a slight knowledge of this. The constitution isn't even discussed in school, yet they expect voters to be informed enough to vote in referenda?

I think CSPE does cover that sort of stuff. The problem is at that age people are too young to digest its significance

seamus

Deleted User wrote:

I think CSPE does cover that sort of stuff. The problem is at that age people are too young to digest its significance

Never heard of it. Is that optional or mandatory?

I think early secondary is probably the best time to teach it, but it would be an awfully boring subject at that age, if not taught properly.

Bards

ninja900 wrote:

Rubbish. Even before the current decentralisations were announced, most public servants already were based outside Dublin. Don't forget teachers, Gardai, doctors, nurses are public servants too.

How many IT based Public Service jobs are there outside of Dublin?

I.E the same jobs that you can get in multinationals and the Public Service.. therefore you muist leave out Teacher, Guards, Nurses etc.

seamus

seamus wrote:

Never heard of it. Is that optional or mandatory?

I think early secondary is probably the best time to teach it, but it would be an awfully boring subject at that age, if not taught properly.

I did it for Junior Cert. Good idea in theory. Not in practice. Generally teachers aren't really qualified to teach it. At that age, kids rarely have the critical and independent thinking skills for the course to work as it should. Personally I think classes in debateing/critical thinking might be more effective. At least that give kids a toolkit to think rather just packaging politics in another boring rote learining based course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic%2C_Social_and_Political_Education

my_house

Bards wrote:

How many IT based Public Service jobs are there outside of Dublin?

I.E the same jobs that you can get in multinationals and the Public Service.. therefore you muist leave out Teacher, Guards, Nurses etc.

every county council has an IT staff of around 15 people

Jackie laughlin

Anyone who regrets leaving school without the points for college but who now wants an alternative route into 3rd level should look to Access corses whichare more suited to adult learning than is the Leaving Cert.

Teaching political structures would be undemanding and boring. Too many people leave our secondary schools unable to write fluently and think critically. Philosophy generally and political philosophy in particular should be taught.

Dirk Gently

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Teaching political structures would be undemanding and boring. Too many people leave our secondary schools unable to write fluently and think critically. Philosophy generally and political philosophy in particular should be taught.

I have to agree with that. It wasn't until I went to college that we explored critical thinking. While in school there was an attempt to introduce a political and world affairs class for transition years but it didn't last long and most of the class wasn’t at all interested. Most of secondary school is simply about teaching people to pass exams. You're told something, you remember it and then you reproduce what you were told in the exam and get points based on your ability to reproduce that information.

I think something like philosophy and current affairs should be discussed in schools, but maybe not as an exam subject as it is still important that the students concentrate on the linear subjects as that is what is required to get them the points they need to get into college. It's just easier to spoon feed students information for them to reproduce in exams, especially in disadvantaged schools, but a little attention to critical thinking would be welcome imo.

Akrasia

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Anyone who regrets leaving school without the points for college but who now wants an alternative route into 3rd level should look to Access corses whichare more suited to adult learning than is the Leaving Cert.

Teaching political structures would be undemanding and boring. Too many people leave our secondary schools unable to write fluently and think critically. Philosophy generally and political philosophy in particular should be taught.

That is a good idea, but teaching political science and political philosophy would have to be approached in an honest and historically accurate way. The students would have to be taught about all the different political possibilities, everything from Monarchism to Feudalism to ultra 'right' wing Fascism, to ultra 'left' wing Stalinism, to Marxism and Anarchism and then the different kinds of liberal democratic systems, social democracy, republicanism, direct democracy like in switzerland etc etc.


The students whould be given the framework to ask themselves their own questions about politics. They should be taught about Hobbes and locke, different justifications for the state and what the state is even supposed to be.

But that is very unlikely to ever happen, It would be much easier to implement a trivial curriculum that brushed over the war of independence and civil war as if the only political choices we can ever have are between FF FG and Labour.

Jackie laughlin

It could happen and it should happen. One of the problems at 3rd level is that some students find it almost impossible to face up to the new requirement that they think and argue. Others find the change easy and liberating. (By the way, far too many of them have been badly educated in primary and secondary and are to all intents and purposes illiterate; yes, they can basically read and write but extraordinarily badly.)

It would have to be an exam subject or it wouldn't be taken seriously. The difficulty would be in marking it. It is hard to do well in critical reasoning but easy to remember facts for other subjects.

By the way, we should not be dismissive of examining existing political parties; they have philosophical roots and their policies reflect them.

Akrasia

I don't think it's the function of our education system to explain the ethos of any active political party engaged in Irish politics at the moment. Especially not in a course designed to teach about politics in general. It's up to those political parties themselves to promote their own agenda.

However, students should be taught the meaning of words like Conservative, Liberal, NeoConservative, Neoliberal, Nationalist, Republican, Socialist, Libertarian, Anarchist, Marxist and so on, so that they can recognise these terms when they are used by political parties and they can judge for themselves if the terms are being used honestly and truthfully by those political parties to describe the policies they are enacting.

Jackie laughlin

I can't see what would be wrong about relating political theories to real world parties. Philosophy's first duty is to be relevant.

More studies of political parties from a philosophical perspective should be welcomed. Arid histories which read more like gossip than politics are all too common.