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The youth of today…are smarter than me
May. 6th, 2010 10:24 amYesterday we had an ‘election night special’ at Brownies. We asked them if they knew what was happening the next day, if they knew what it meant, if they knew who the main parties were. Most of them did, and we even had to prevent a debate between a girl whose parents were voting liberal and a girl whose parents were Conservative voters. If my Brownie group’s parents are at all representative of Islington I suspect the borough will be safely Labour…
We were all impressed at how much they knew and understood, and when we told them that the plan for the session was to split them into groups, each group being a different political party who wanted to be elected. They had to come up with a name, a logo, and at least 3 policies, then present them to us at the end and tell us why we should vote for them. At the end we held a secret ballot (vote, then take a cupcake – courtesy of one of them doing their cooks badge. Yum.) and we told them we’d tell them the winning party next week.
If I’d been asked to do this at the age of 7, 8 or 9 my policies would have been ban school, or no homework, free chocolate, and make it Christmas everyday. Ok, maybe not, I was a pretty firey child with a very strong sense of right and wrong, as I am sure my mum will testify – perhaps there would have also been a “take all the racists and the people that hate gay people and put them on a boat and sink it” policy as well.
Well, when we heard their policies – gobsmacked is not the word.
One group, the “Moneygettes”, wanted to make dentistry properly part of the NHS, meaning free dental care for all, including working adults. They also wanted to ban money, and replace it with a trade system. They wanted to reduce the amount of homework children get to give them more time to be children, and to make exams optional.
The second group chose the name "The AE Party" and had the party slogan "There's always Hope". They wanted to ban year 6 SATS, with the reasoning that (they actually used this phrase) they have “no bearing on your future”, that they made schoolchildren and teachers stressed and wasted lots of paper so were bad for the environment as well! They also wanted to improve zoos, making them all like the animal’s natural habitat, and make sure everyone was entitled to free training so they could train their animals to be good and not attack people, and so they would know how to look after their pets properly.
Group 3 called themselves "The Inky Party" and wanted to change taxes so they were fairer, with the richer people paying more and the poorer people paying less. With the money they would make sure that everyone who didn’t have a garden could have an allotment so they could have a garden of their own to grow vegetables, which they said would help the environment because people wouldn’t go to the shops and use plastic bags so often! They also wanted to make more parks and green areas in cities, plant more trees and give local people the right to say what happened in their parks. They also wanted to have more children's hospitals.
The fourth group were the “Freedom Party” and they wanted to ban nuclear weapons and make half of the government female so it properly represented people in Britain. They also wanted to improve the quality of teaching, so that children didn't end up going to upper school not being able to read, and so parents don't have to pay for extra tuition or Saturday classes. They also talked about hospitals, wanting to open more and make them better.
We counted up the votes after they’d left, and the result was amusingly enough a hung parliament – a dead tie between the Freedom Party and The Inky Party.
We’re going to give them the chance to debate next week and talk about what they learned before we tell them the result, and of course by then we’ll know the state of the real government, so we can link in with that and see what they think.
What do you think?
[Poll #1560873]
Think back to when you were 7, 8 or 9. What policy do you think you would have come up with? I'm pretty sure mine wouldn't have been half as sensible or as well thought out as some of these. Colour me impressed. The future of Britain might be safe, as long as my Brownies were in charge.
We were all impressed at how much they knew and understood, and when we told them that the plan for the session was to split them into groups, each group being a different political party who wanted to be elected. They had to come up with a name, a logo, and at least 3 policies, then present them to us at the end and tell us why we should vote for them. At the end we held a secret ballot (vote, then take a cupcake – courtesy of one of them doing their cooks badge. Yum.) and we told them we’d tell them the winning party next week.
If I’d been asked to do this at the age of 7, 8 or 9 my policies would have been ban school, or no homework, free chocolate, and make it Christmas everyday. Ok, maybe not, I was a pretty firey child with a very strong sense of right and wrong, as I am sure my mum will testify – perhaps there would have also been a “take all the racists and the people that hate gay people and put them on a boat and sink it” policy as well.
Well, when we heard their policies – gobsmacked is not the word.
One group, the “Moneygettes”, wanted to make dentistry properly part of the NHS, meaning free dental care for all, including working adults. They also wanted to ban money, and replace it with a trade system. They wanted to reduce the amount of homework children get to give them more time to be children, and to make exams optional.
The second group chose the name "The AE Party" and had the party slogan "There's always Hope". They wanted to ban year 6 SATS, with the reasoning that (they actually used this phrase) they have “no bearing on your future”, that they made schoolchildren and teachers stressed and wasted lots of paper so were bad for the environment as well! They also wanted to improve zoos, making them all like the animal’s natural habitat, and make sure everyone was entitled to free training so they could train their animals to be good and not attack people, and so they would know how to look after their pets properly.
Group 3 called themselves "The Inky Party" and wanted to change taxes so they were fairer, with the richer people paying more and the poorer people paying less. With the money they would make sure that everyone who didn’t have a garden could have an allotment so they could have a garden of their own to grow vegetables, which they said would help the environment because people wouldn’t go to the shops and use plastic bags so often! They also wanted to make more parks and green areas in cities, plant more trees and give local people the right to say what happened in their parks. They also wanted to have more children's hospitals.
The fourth group were the “Freedom Party” and they wanted to ban nuclear weapons and make half of the government female so it properly represented people in Britain. They also wanted to improve the quality of teaching, so that children didn't end up going to upper school not being able to read, and so parents don't have to pay for extra tuition or Saturday classes. They also talked about hospitals, wanting to open more and make them better.
We counted up the votes after they’d left, and the result was amusingly enough a hung parliament – a dead tie between the Freedom Party and The Inky Party.
We’re going to give them the chance to debate next week and talk about what they learned before we tell them the result, and of course by then we’ll know the state of the real government, so we can link in with that and see what they think.
What do you think?
[Poll #1560873]
Think back to when you were 7, 8 or 9. What policy do you think you would have come up with? I'm pretty sure mine wouldn't have been half as sensible or as well thought out as some of these. Colour me impressed. The future of Britain might be safe, as long as my Brownies were in charge.
