Teaching Politics

After our class on Tuesday, and running a discussion on teaching Politics to our students, I had a little epiphany. We, as Social Studies teachers, are in a privileged position when it comes to making a difference and getting students involved. The fact that our course is called SOCIAL studies should tell us something. It isn't just about History and Geography, it is also about Sociology, Anthropology, and Current Events. It is extremely important that we don't forget that. When I was talking to my group today about the election and how to deal with it in the classroom, none of them seemed to remember that they had actually learned (or should have learned) about the Canadian political system and the Parties and their platforms in Grade 11.
We have been talking about creating active citizens, and the easiest way for someone to be active in their community is to get out there and VOTE. I am second generation Canadian, my grandparents immigrated from Holland after WWII (my Opa lived underground after escaping from the Nazi's, but that's a story for another post) so we have learned the value of the vote, and how precious the ability to participate in democracy is. Not all of our students are going to come from that kind of background. Who is going to motivate them if not us?
Something that has come up a few times in discussion with various groups in various classes is the idea of presenting the issues that students will be interested in or affect them directly, like Education, the Environment, and Family issues. If we can give them the tools to figure out where they stand and get PASSIONATE about it, then maybe we can do something to change the passive "nothing I do matters" attitude that seems to permeate through the younger generations (ours included). Imagine what would happen if everyone between 18 and 25 actually voted.