Time we taught our young people all about politics...
COLUMNIST
GIVING 16-year-olds the right to vote in council elections in Wales is a welcome proposal. Now we need to update education so teenagers make properly informed decisions at the ballot box.
Anyone who has a teenager, has a passing acquaintance with one or was once 16 themselves either knows, or should recall, that this group includes the most opinionated members of our society, with a finely honed set of ideas about justice and rights.
The image of teenagers as a mass of grunting, hood-wearing beings speaking only in monosyllables and with no interest in anything but an Xbox is one of the great prejudices of our time. There’d be an outcry if we labelled any other section of our society so unfairly.
Now the Welsh Government has announced it is proposing to give 16-year-olds the vote in council elections, it needs to ramp up the new curriculum so they have the current affairs and politics education so woefully lacking for generations under all hues of government.
If the Welsh Government’s proposals become law, 16 and 17-yearolds here would be able to vote for the first time in the 2022 council elections.
The proposals would bring Wales alongside Scotland in cutting the legal vote age, but Scotland has also legislated to give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote at all Scottish Parliament and local elections.
Encouraging young people in this way to have a say in how their world is shaped is the first step to having a population of adults who are genuinely involved in the society we live in.
There are signs that young people are becoming more politically engaged, but their history of voting is depressing.
Despite an increase in youth turnout in the 2016 general election, young people were still noticeably less likely to vote than older people.
YouGov data shows that while 57% of 18 and 19-year-olds voted in that election, for those aged 70 and over the figure was 84%.
It’s not surprising that many young people feel politics has little to do with them.
Our young children go through a school system that is geared towards exams and results, with little time for teachers to be creative and weave current affairs and politics in across subjects.
Unless a pupil opts to study history at GCSE or politics at AS and A-level, there is scant opportunity to learn about those who rule us and the wider world in class.
Many do educate themselves by watching the news or following events on social media – but that ensures they probably only get one voice, one opinion and one side to a story. Social media keeps us in groups of people we agree with.
If we want our teenagers to have a genuine voice in the democratic process, our schools must help give them the unbiased information they need and be given the time and opportunity to do that.
Now is the perfect time to do this, with the new curriculum for Wales being developed.
The next generation will have to live with, and pay for, decisions taken by those in power who were voted in over the past few decades.
Old and young have different priorities. The cost of housing and university education, low pay, an uncertain job market and the even greater uncertainty of Brexit are far bigger concerns for today’s 16-year-olds than for those in their 60s and over.
While council elections don’t deal with all these things, many local decisions affect young people hugely. How their leisure centres and schools are run and funded, local sports provision and youth services among them.
The announcement that 16-yearolds are to get the vote in local elections in Wales prompted the predictable cry from some quarters that it was a cynical ploy by a certain party to garner votes on councils.
More YouGov data show there is a political divide by age. Young people were more likely to vote Remain in the Brexit referendum, while for first-time voters (those aged 18 and 19) in the 2016 general election, Labour was 47 percentage points ahead.
Among those aged over 70, the Conservatives had a lead of 50 percentage points.
But it’s glib to see votes at 16 as a party political issue. It is an issue of education and justice.
No-one expects our young people to pick up algebra or grammar by osmosis, they are taught it. Equally, they should not be expected to pick up the facts about how local or national government works by osmosis, either.
How we expect them to suddenly become politically literate at 18 – or indeed 16 – when we have taught them so little about the politics which affect them, is remarkable
Now at last we have an opportunity in Wales, with two things coming together – votes at 16 and a new curriculum. Let’s hope the powers that be, voted in by the over-18s, use this chance to move learning into the future by putting current affairs and politics squarely into lesson time at schools in Wales.