Political Awareness

There's a General Election taking place on this little island tomorrow, and following the ins and outs of the campaigning by the various parties involved has been interesting and instructive, as it always is. It's been a reminder that people are the same everywhere, but everywhere is different.

The populace here seem to regard themselves as being politically naive, but this is far from the case. Most people I talk to, regardless of age, or occupation, are extremely savvy, and engaged to some degree in the process, even if they think they aren't. Case in point: this morning I was asked to carry out a lesson in which the key question for pupils to get things going was simply to ask what they made of the election. The result: a series of insightful comments worthy of any participant in the BBC's flagship Question Time. Yet the 'lesson designers' (yes, there are such folks here) seemed to be of the opinion that young peole here are politically apathetic.

Beware simplistic generalisations, say I.