Getting teenagers to care about the U.S. election

Sophy Cohen, a student at Santa Monica High School, writes:

Listening in to most dinner discussions, it soon becomes apparent that politics are usually on the table. At my house, we discuss events around the world, as well as politics in this country. If we have guests, I usually get quizzed on what my friends and I think of a certain issue being discussed by the presidential candidates. As the election grows nearer and hopes grow stronger, being informed of the current election is important, no matter what your age.

The opinion of youth has never been held more highly during a presidential election as it is now. Young people hold the answer to the world’s growing problems and to the chance to fix them. So what’s the problem? That kids are not informed enough and have grown not to care.

But at my school, the majority of kids became informed. We had a mock election last semester, with students discussing the candidates in government and economics classes. A booth was set up with paper ballots for a schoolwide vote. Meanwhile, volunteers from Rock the Vote came and registered students who were 18. The winner of our mock election was Barack Obama by far.

More and more young people are taking part, but I still believe we have a chance to do more.

As more and more 17- and 18-year-olds are targeted on the 3rd Street Promenade to register to vote, they not only need to sign up but also become informed of the crucial decisions they are voting on. My friends and I talked more about the election when both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in the running. Now we're not as informed, which is a problem. We should read up on both Obama and John McCain.

I encourage my peers to take advantage of the opportunity before them … and make a difference in the world. If you like a candidate and want to help, sign up on the candidate's website, volunteer at a phone bank, pass out flyers at the mall on a Saturday, spread out and inform. You are needed. So take a break this summer and help, in every little way that you can.

Comments

[Sabin Haydn]

I would also encourage young voters to engage themselves in their regional politics. This is not as 'sexy' as national or international issues to some. Nevertheless, if citizens feel removed from Sacramento like I do (I live in Malibu) then there is a deleterious effect to respond very superficially to a national election calling on citizens from Boyle Heights, to Hesperia, to Beverly Hills to react on national and international issues when no relationship between local and national politics has been fostered.

[victor0803]

What a pity, people in USA claimed they are not inform while people in Asia are informed enough to choose Obama!

[hecowe]

"Informed" high schoolers choose Obama? Did they get this information from their union-flunky teachers? What makes him so attractive -- his lack of a coherent energy policy or his tailored suits? His qualified admiration of the US or his sterling record of change in the Senate? You're going to have to do better than that to convince me you're "informed." You'd be better off voting for Paris -- she's the only one who seems to be looking at our problems without becoming an idealogue.

[Windfalll]

The government-controlled public school system does not educate children. It indoctrinates them.

Education majors are the bottom feeders, by any measure, the least intelligent people on any college campus. By and large, public school teachers do what they do because they lack the self-confidence (often times rightly so) to compete in the real world. So they never leave the structure and security of the public school system. In a sense, they never grow up

And, of course, they resent the rest of the world that does. That is why they spend the rest of their lives promulgating Marxism to their students. It’s a philosophy of failure, taught by failures within a system that subsidizes failure. You’ll never get an honest discussion of any issue in such an environment. And without an honest debate, you’ll never get to an informed opinion on any subject much less anything resembling a general level of overall intelligence.

Just look at what this author conjures up as insight. “Young people hold the answer to the world’s growing problems.” Really? Well, where did they find this answer, assuming they actually do hold it? Did they just invent it last night between watching reruns of American Idol, playing the latest version of Guitar Hero and texting over their iPods about who is having oral sex in order to maintain her boyfriend’s interest?

Young people know nothing other that what they have been taught. They may have been taught right or they may have been taught wrong but they lack both the professional and real life experience to have anything approaching an original idea.

Don’t believe me? How many world-changing inventions were patented by teenagers last year?

[LAUSD Teacher]

Sophy,

What a great post you've written. Holding a mock election was a great idea to get students involved in a free exchange of ideas and thoughts about issues that affect all of us but in many cases people just your age deal with the effects of these issues more acutely.

You should completely disregard a couple of the comments as complete rubbish. What those posts are completely disregarding is the fact that students have been involved in every organized social and political movement in history. It is young people, like yourselves, not just in this country, but around the world, that bring change and have always brought change. (Just study the more recent Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam anti-war movement, popular democratic revolutions around the globe, and you'll see a consistent pattern of young people forming the foundation of these movements.

Old men are consistently the ones who send young men to die in wars far away for criminal reasons such as destroying the very movements that young people engage in, or to protect his friends' money and resources, or perpetuate the military-industrial complex this country (and others) have been trapped in since World War II (President Eisenhower speaks about this in his farewell address).

Sophy, continue becoming involved in politics and issues of social justice. With more young people like you encouraging others to get informed, register to vote, and then actually vote, this world will be a better place.

Keep hoping,

-LAUSD Teacher