Am I being unreasonable to think the lack of political education is damaging democracy?

It's not the voters who are confused about council elections versus general elections. It is the political class and the media.

The media, Labour opponents of Starmer, Reform and the Greens have decided to make these elections 'national' issues and deliberately confuse and mislead. The Labour left are calling it a verdict on Starmer (even though the losses are coming from their own backyards), the Reform Party made it about immigration and Greens made it about taxing billionaires and Gaza.

And now the voters are being blamed for not being 'educated' enough. FML.

Politics is basically just opinion. Critical thinking is subjective. One person’s ‘intelligence’ is another persons ‘lots of nonsense’.

All we need to know is that politicians, of all parties, are basically liars, they all feather their own nests, and actually, don’t give a toss about voters.

So, we just vote for who we think will make the least mess out of it.

Can't see a deprived area getting much cut from a Reform council.
The blame of social ills on immigrants is a well trodden path by the far right and extreme far right.
Reform at National level are friends to the multi millionaire and billionaire if you're one of the little people forget it.
If farage is one of us,how many of us have received a £5million gift just doesn't happen.

What you describe is most definitely taught in schools, including critical thinking. In my experience what is then lacking is the conversation with children about it at home.

It’s no coincidence that the results for my council show that the most deprived ward voted Reform. It’s a council that’s been Lib Dem for as long as I can remember and they do get stuff done locally in our ward. Our MP is LD but was previously a Tory who resigned in embarrassment after making headline news. Prior to that he was invisible locally. I’m politically homeless and hate how decisive politics is. I was teaching my 11 year old Ds about critical thinking yesterday on the way to vote. There’s a distinct lack of it sadly as is evidenced daily on our local Facebook page.

Trouble is the parents are illiterate too so they push the little they know on their children. Bright children will go away and research if interested and engaged. My mum is a bit dim (I’m being nice) but my IQ is fairly high and I engaged naturally with politics from a young age. I honestly don’t know why but I had a proclivity towards the Lib Dem’s at about 8, really liked Charles Kennedy. This did not come from my family whatsoever, my mum was Labour then BNP…

Politics should be on the curriculum, and not as some bit part within PHSCE. My 7 year old was interested yesterday so I explained precisely what people were voting for. He asked if we get to vote for what the council spends the money on so I explained participatory democracy to him and that we don’t have have a system like that, we live in a representative democracy and vote for someone we hope will do the right thing.

Most people probably don’t know the difference between participatory and representative modes of democracy. I’m not being patronising either, it just isn’t taught.

Like many other things people want everyone else to do for them, isnt it up to parents and then adults to edcuate their children and themselves about this? all the information is out there people need to get off the backsides and actually do it

This opinion is the whole problem

My DP voted leave by postal vote from their house in the sun. You couldn't make it up.

We do teach it in PSHE but lessons on how the local council works don't tend to be of much interest to children. About 50% of passive learning is forgotten after 1 hour and about 90% in about a week. They also learn from their school council that not much gets done in councils. The active political discussions are more interesting, but in the schools I taught in, they did involve strong political views delivered in the the unfiltered way of teenagers. The things said would definitely send many mumsnetters dashing off to report to someone within moments of the lesson starting.

What's your issue. Unlike my in laws in their 80's my 16 yr old sons vote wouldn't solely be based on getting rid of boat people

Lucky you. The humanities and social sciences have been desecrated so much over the past 17 years, there’s barely any GCSE choices left and even the ones that do exist aren’t popular anymore because Gove and Gibb destroyed the way they’re taught. I don’t know a single school that offers a GCSE in politics. Many children leave school without the slightest modicum of political education. Everything is word of mouth so if their families are politically illiterate then they will be too.

Think voting should be mandatory

@MissyB1 Labour are keen on voting age being 16! Heaven help us. It’s really not acceptable.

I think providing facts on process is fairly safe ground.

But as soon as it gets to policy it gets onto slippery ground.

Let’s say I make a provably false claim in the process of criticizing their sanctuary city policy. It might seem fine for council staff to correct that. But unless they are also correcting false claims in posts that support the policy then it ends up being politically partial.

Yes most schools add this to their PSHE lessons. I don't trust the school system to be teaching fair and unbiased. My child came home once they'd been talking about politics and she said she was pretty much bullied into agreeing anyone who voted refrom was a racist. It would be good If they were having proper conversations with students and discuss the pros and cons of each party. In reality it doesn't happen. They just pretend labour and socialism is wonderful, ow and the greens she said most kids were saying how good they are 😂 because again schools shove climate change agenda down our kids throats and brainwash them. I've shown her some of the greens policys and set her straight on that one.

Many people (including me) are too old to have benefited from it, but in England Citizenship is compulsory in the national curriculum at key stage 3 and 4 (and I think has been for over 20 years.). I believe it’s voluntary at key stages 1 and 2).

I think the statutory programmes of study are pretty comprehensive.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f324f7ad3bf7f1b1ea28dca/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_Citizenship.pdf

Surely, if he was accessing free healthcare in Spain for numerous operations, he was legally resident in Spain?

You should be so proud of your dc!

I started off being sure I was going to vote for Brexit. Did a lot of reading up and watching debates etc and voted remain in the end. I can’t fathom why people don’t try and understand the consequences of their vote.

@HopeToFind I’m with you up until your Newcastle City Council point.

I don’t want any elected body using public money to tell us what is and isn’t misinformation, as it’s bound to be political.

Do they call out tweets that support council policy but are factually iffy, for example? Or police falsehoods on both sides of contentious issues equally?

My teenager actually argued this very point in a national final of a public speaking competition. He spoke about how young people are supposed to go out and suddenly vote at 18 when most of them have had no education about politics at all. He argued politics should be a core subject in school. He chose the topic because he realised how many of his peers couldn’t even name the main political parties, let alone what they stood for!