When our Modern Studies teachers wanted "volunteers" for something, naturally we were suspicious. About the General Election? Yawn. The whole country was already bored to death with electioneering. But wait - they wanted a pupil's perspective! That sounded immediately more appealing. On the Internet? The Superhighway meets The Road Ahead? Why not. At the very least it would look good on our CVs. We were ready to surf the net. A piece of cake. Little did we know just what we were letting ourselves in for . . .
All (alleged) volunteers met for the first time in the library, eager to get stuck in. Teachers and pupils working side by side, both techno-phoebes and techno-freaks united in their mission to inform and educate all 'net surfers about the General Election, and how it affects young people. Most of us had never tried the Internet before, so a great deal of fun was had by all as we went surfing, pressing various different buttons: "Hey, what happens when I press this . . ."
Soon the honeymoon period was over, and we were hit with the enormity of our task: to create a set of pages on the Internet explaining about the forthcoming General Election.
We all met to discuss and dissect our task, to throw ideas around and to assign jobs. We split into sub-groups which broke down into more sub-sub-groups and committees that shared out all the work. Many heated debates took place, about a variety of burning issues (i.e. - who would have to count the survey responses, and who was going to be stuck with all the typing) but unlike parliament none of the debates (well, hardly any) ever broke down into personal attacks.
Don't have a clue what you're doing? Delegate! That was the motto that seemed to have been adopted, as those absent from committee progress-meetings were given the hardest/ least popular/ most time-consuming tasks.
Finally we all regrouped, congratulated each other for a job well done, and frantically tried to get everything finished before we broke up for the holidays. . . Wait a moment - we were just like parliament! (Well, without the sleaze, sex scandals and Government cover-ups, obviously.)
It was decided that the first and most important task was to survey the rest of the school on the topic. We needed to find out exactly what young people already knew about politics, what they wanted to know, and what issues they thought were important. The most effective way to do this was to draw up both a quiz, to test knowledge, and a survey, to see what it was that people were interested in. The results were quite honestly outstanding as you can see for yourself on Our Election Quiz and Our Local Survey Results. Alarming, a rather large amount of pupils seemed not even to know who their local MP was. One pupil invented his own cabinet posts: Minister for sport?!! Minister for horticulture?!! Perhaps rather unsurprising, when asked what changes young people wanted made to laws nearly all wanted the age for legalised drinking lowered. (Apart from one pupil who wanted to know exactly what legislation was anyway).
What are they teaching young people in Modern Studies these days? A rather pertinent question it would appear, as some of the teachers seemed to know less about their subject than the pupils. One of the questions in the quiz asked what post was held by Robin Cook, and none of the Modern Studies teachers were able to remember. " I know what his last post was". Very helpful. In the end we had to phone the House of Commons education line who eventually came up with the right answer: Shadow spokesman for foreign affairs, apparently.
So what did we all learn from the experience. A few rather important lessons, we all agreed. Such as? Something about never leaving everything to the last week. Also, we all learned a lot about the General Election, and that perhaps the political parties should read our pages. A general mood that seemed to run through everything that we did was that not enough focus is given to young people and what they want. If young people were somehow more involved in the political process then perhaps they would be more interested in parliament, and more likely to vote. Young people are after all not only the voters of the future, but also future MPs, cabinet ministers, civil servants, even future Prime Ministers.
Finally, however much fun a project sounds, however interested in the topic you are, whenever you feel the urge to volunteer for something "just say no!"
A big thank-you and grateful slap on the back are in order for everyone who lent their time or their expertise to the task. From the pupils who ticked the boxes on a survey sheet to the executive committee who co-ordinated the whole effort. Thank-you to(in no particular order): All the art classes who created cartoons, and clay models of our country's leaders that can be seen on the Holographic Hall of Horrors, to librarian Mrs. Robertson ("I can only work with pencils and bits of paper")who tried her very best to recruit any techno-fan passing through the library, to Mr. Slapp the computer expert, Mr. Cordiner the art expert, and Miss. Boulter "what does Robin Cook do anyway?". To Stuart Howe, Jenny Buchanan, Emma Steele, Alison McDonald and Alison Presly who faithfully attended every committee meeting. To Lynsey Steele who claimed that she was going to build a clay model of Whitehall, but later admitted that it would in fact be a somewhat scaled down version, to Carol Murray who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the photo session, to myself (well I deserve it) Ashleigh Gray who wrote these very pages, and everyone else. To all, even if your name has been forgotten, your effort has not . . .
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