The Political System of the United Kingdom. A Lesson Plan for the 11th Grade

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, University of Augsburg, language: English, abstract: This term paper states that our society needs a major emphasis on the importance of teaching the political systems to the younger generation in order to make them mature human beings. After a theoretical background about teaching politics by intertwining two subjects and a special focus on group work, I explain the plan for an introductory lesson on the British political system in eleventh grade that is subject of this term paper in detail. Apparently, teaching politics is not self-evident as it was relatively complicated to find authentic material on the topic. Based on this, it is paramount to consider different ways of giving the students an understanding of the most fundamental part of our society - the political system. The possibilities to do so form one research question I follow when writing this paper. Most politicians, the so-called experts on our democracy, are just regular people who gained political experience by entering a political party on one or another adventurous way. The question that arises here is how these people qualified themselves to lead our country. They did not study politics or economics. So basically, what they call qualification is just the will to participate in the state's political life. From the moment on they enter this world of politics, they seem to exclude themselves from 'normal' peoples' lifes. They decide on things they barely know anything about as if they were in some way superior. As George Burns said, when politicians would ask the society for suggestions or opinions, they would finally be able to control politics in a way that is truly in favor of the people.