Big shout out for first Political Literacy Day
TODAY, November 4th, in case any of you have forgotten or not heard, is Political Literacy Day – indeed, the UK’s first Political Literacy Day. Excited?
Yes, I do realise that in this ultra-commercial age, every day plus most weeks and months commemorate something, and indeed this column has sometimes referenced those I consider particularly worthy and/or interesting.
Most recently was probably Black History Month, but before that would almost certainly have been Local Democracy Weeks, which I recently discovered I’d been writing about on and off for nearly a quarter of a century.
The discovery was occasioned by an unfocused search for data and documents I may or may not have lost when my desktop computer crashed, as yet irreparably – one less vital find being a September 1999 Post column describing some of the fascinating activities organised by local councils as part of recent years’ Local Democracy Weeks, promoted by the Local Government Association.
In 1998 our new PM Tony Blair, oddly for someone as notoriously techno-hopeless as me, must have indicated that he’d like to see more computers in schools.
Which had prompted Slough Borough Council to stage a ‘mock referendum’ in which local schoolchildren were asked whether their council should spend £6,000 on extending IT provision in underequipped schools, creating a rollerblade park, or planting trees to improve the town’s environment.
Surprise, surprise! The young voters overwhelmingly chose the rollerblade park – and, to its credit, the council did the honourable thing and within three months provided one.
The Slough referendum was just one of several hundred events, initiatives and activities staged in that June 1998 Local Democracy Week, the general aim of which was to encourage people to participate more actively in their councils’ decision-making and to showcase the wide range of consultation procedures and public participation schemes already in existence – indeed, though the term wasn’t then used, to enhance political literacy.
Coventry Council too focused on its young people, launching a Citizenship Pack for schoolchildren which included a financial decisionmaking exercise in keeping a school clean and a housing board game role-playing the difficulties of getting a council house.
By contrast, one Birmingham contribution was to convene its first Senior Citizens Forum, enabling older residents to voice their opinions of services provided by the council, health authorities and other agencies.
I’m unsure what happened to these forums, although I seem to recall at least a few wards and neighbourhoods taking up the idea.
Other popular initiatives included citizens panels, service-user surveys, roadshows, touring exhibitions, and free phone-in days to the council leader or chief executive.
Not everything was as swiftly and measurably productive as the Slough referendum. But participation by councils and public alike was
sufficiently encouraging for Local Democracy Week to become an annual event.
Which it still, kind of, is – at least if you’re prepared to forage. The apparently positive news is that in 2007 it went pan-European, co-ordinated by the Council of Europe.
Nowadays, therefore, throughout the year the municipalities of the 47 CoE member states – including, still, the UK – are encouraged to organise initiatives all over Europe aimed at promoting citizen participation, “fostering dialogue” between the community and public authorities, strengthening trust in elected representatives and institutions and providing a European dimension to local initiatives.
Culminating ‘flagship events’ take place during, this year, the third week in October.
And, if you Google ‘Local Democracy Week 2021’, you’ll quickly find an impressively wide-ranging list of both October and ‘anytime’ council activities... if, that is, you reside in the West Yorkshire borough of Kirklees. Elsewhere, you’ll have to search considerably more diligently.
Which brings me back to today: Political Literacy Day.
The designated day may be new, but the concept is old and obvious: quite simply citizens’ possession of the so-called ‘skill set’ – knowledge, understanding, critical thinking skills – required to enable them to participate actively and positively in their society’s government.
The hope was that, with ‘Citizenship’ having eventually made it on to at least the secondary school
curriculum, this skill set would become prominent among the ‘basic life skills’ that would nowadays be acquired sometime over a decade’s full-time education – like speed reading, cooking, time and money management, driving and car maintenance, self-defence.
But, due not least to the shortage of suitably qualified teaching staff, the evidence is that this is still only comparatively rarely the case.
Hearty congrats, therefore, to Matteo Bergamini, the impressively (almost depressingly) young film producer, and founder of the now multi-award-winning education platform and creative social enterprise, Shout Out UK.
The SOUK acronym may be ugly, but its work is admirable.
Having developed a three-course E-platform, linked to Key Stages 3,4 and 5, they have worked with over a thousand schools delivering classes and workshops on political and media literacy – and now, given the daily online spread of pandemic and now climate mis- and disinformation, the never more timely launch of Political Literacy Day.
Our biased electoral and two-party systems, in addition to alienating many voters, partly explain why schools have historically been and still are nervous of teaching anything ‘political’, which could be accused of being ’partisan’.
Citizens’ Assemblies, on big one-off subjects like tackling the climate emergency, or locally and now permanent, as in the London Borough of Newham, may be part of a more politically literate future. SOUK will surely be another.
Now, given the daily online spread of pandemic and now climate mis- and dis-information, the never more timely launch of Political Literacy Day...