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

[HopeToFind]

I don’t think this is talked about enough.
Political understanding in the UK is often alarmingly poor, and it is allowing media bias, misinformation, and shallow outrage politics to thrive unchecked.

Too many people do not even understand the difference between local councils and Parliament, or between a council employee and an elected councillor — yet still speak with absolute certainty.
There is also a poor understanding of how taxes fund collective services such as social care, housing, roads, waste collection, and emergency services.

Political education should start in schools, not to tell children what to think politically, but to teach critical thinking, evidence, fact checking, democratic structures, accountability, and standards in public life — including the Nolan Principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. My school provided a subject called ‘Civics’, it gave me a basic understanding of being a citizen.

Instead, public debate is increasingly shaped by headlines, algorithms, and “keyboard warrior” commentary that is often factually incorrect but repeated confidently enough to gain traction. A population with limited political understanding is far easier to manipulate, whether by partisan media, social media echo chambers, or misinformation campaigns.

I am giving credit to Newcastle City Council for actively correcting misinformation and challenging ill-informed claims on social media. I love reading their Facebook page, where they evidence the truth. More public bodies should challenge false narratives with facts rather than allowing misinformation to spread unopposed.

Think voting should be mandatory

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.

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

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.

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

This opinion is the whole problem

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I teach this stuff every week in secondary. Same as we teach budgeting, taxes, consent, critical thinking and equitability and on and on. And as we teach about feminism, the students leave the class mumbling that Tate is right and the schools and governments are lying to them. And after teaching about political systems, they leave the class mumbling about small boats and illegals. We ARE doing our bit but we're up against the behemoth of social media and bias, just like everybody else.

And the people on here talking about us ramming agendas and political bias down children's throats, no we don't. We are politically neutral and if your schools are not, there are steps you can take.

I do challenge rhetoric that students repeat (year 9 just this week told me that "illegals" get a house for life, an iPhone and freedom to rape "our" women. The parent claimed that we were brainwashing them when we looked at the actual procedures.

YANBU. The number of people I’ve seen saying they’re “voting for Nigel” to “stop the boats” in the local elections is genuinely terrifying. Sadly, we’ve sealed the deal as a nation.

It's alarming how ignorant people are in general - that also extends to politicians.

The irony here is that people with the least critical thinking skills are the ones who vote for left wing parties.

Where does 'trans women are women' come from?

Yes, widespread ignorance around the role of institutions and single issue focus are largely what put Trump back in the White House. Same is happening everywhere. Politics by social media is an absolute plague and our educational system is not ambitious enough anymore when it comes to 'big' difficult questions. It fosters intellectual laziness. The well-intentioned notion of 'respect everyone's views' has turned into 'never challenge anyone's views'. There's no right or wrong, no direction, everything is equivalent, 'both-sides-ist'. That's in fact very dangerous. The 'never challenge anyone's views' approach is a very slippery slope exploited by politically toxic movements. Why label them toxic (how nasty of me, right)? Basic notions of political philosophy make that obvious. The world has now sunk to such a level where it's possible to see the head of state of a constitutional monarchy (our very own King Charles III) remind the US Congress of the basic principle on which they founded their independence: checks and balances on the executive. Congress's failures set the clock back a few centuries, not decades. I do not think for one second that the British electorate and our British institutions will fare any better should we get our own MAGA UK version (it's a franchise, by the way, and everyone should look closely at the links between the US MAGA and international branches of far right politics). Looking at the results today though, I should probably switch my username to Cassandra.

In what way?

Or maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the most important issue to a lot of people? The trans population in the UK is tiny. I’d rather focus on things like the NHS, policies of creating “detention camps”, and the party that’s full of members who chanted “seig heil” at a rally.

Stonewall mostly. Who did most of their overreach under a Conservative government. The Conservative chair of the Equalities Committee, Maria Miller, was a big factor in this

Also, women on here who keep on peddling the line 'but the left don't even know what a woman is' should not come whining when the UK version of Project 2025 comes for our rights.

My experience in having two young people recently out of education and able to vote is they understand more about politics than I did at their age. I personally think it’s older people who don’t understand and follow the rhetoric in the frankly awful printed press without doing their own research. Young people who understand social media and can navigate it better are actually able to research stuff alot better than many of the older generations.

True - and I have observed the same around me. But young people don't tend to vote enough. Maybe that will change for the next GE but voting trends have shown they don't turn up as much as older demographics.

In theory yes you are spot on.

In practice, most people who think that the uneducated masses are ruining democracy are conflating people disagreeing with them and people being ignorant.

This isn't only left to right - I've heard plenty of people on both sides make this same point.

The left point to the poor uneducated Brexit voter with no idea about economics and a brain full of conspiracy theories and racism...

The right point to the daydreaming young middle class student who has no real-life experience but a brain full of useless radical education with little real world value or actual logic.

Could you make the case that both are true and we need an overall increase in political awareness? Sure... but every time someone tries, I'm always skeptical because after discussion it usually comes back to the same "Those who vote against my preference are stupid"