Hey Y’all, Max here.
It could be said that Canada, as a nation, is not as interesting as it’s friends down south or across the ocean. However, it is a world power and thus it has an influence in the modern world, dictated by a relatively functional and good government. And what type of Social Studies class would this be if we didn’t study the very government that makes the laws we live under, the neighbourhoods we live in, and the taxes we don’t pay?
The other component of this project was reading the book The Lord of the Flies. I had not read this beforehand and I can’t say for certain the message of the book got through to me. What I did understand was the book’s fictional narrative emphasizing the importance and flaws in a society, particularly when a government is created.
The project had two driving questions. ( Or maybe it only had one and I’m confused. ) :
“ Why do politics matter and why should you bother? “
and
“ How do we convince young people that they should vote? “
I will answer these at the end of this post.
Reading the Lord of the Flies, reflecting upon it, and discussing it with a group took up a good 1/3rd of the project. Aside from just politics and societies as a generality, the book also introduced to me the involvement of young people in these politics and societies. This would also become a major part of this project. In fact, the whole point of this project is to understand why young people in general don’t get involved in politics, and more directly why they don’t vote. For the reading I will admit I am not a good note taker so after finishing the book I just compiled all my thoughts and opinions into a big block of text, which you can read here.
The lord of the Flies was an excellent introduction to the underlying tones of the project but the main aspect of it would materialize in a group video, one that explains the government of Canada, and how to vote. My group consisted of Theryn , Sabrina , and Teva . Our initial idea for our video is the same one we stuck with, a poll-style game to a.) see how well you payed attention to our presentation/video, and b.) see where you lie with Canadian Politics.
The video easily took up the majority of the project, from utero to maturity. Sabrina handled the animated aspects of the video, Teva did a lot of the dialogue and plot work ( with Sabrina ), and Theryn mostly did editorial stuff. Everyone pitched in everywhere, me included. The link to our video is below:
Who Cares and why bother? Why you should vote
The group would be tested when Teva unexpectedly became ill, forcing the three of us to improvise without her. It was difficult at times, but we were able to change her presentation parts to us and everything worked out. It’s not worth acknowledging really, but this was a good reminder of the unpredictability within projects, especially in group work. Not that it was Teva’s fault, but when one person is unable to complete their share it isn’t optimal to just hope for the best, it’s much better to carry on and adapt to the challenge.
As a group we made a craft document to record and review our work. You can view it here.
I really think this project touched upon one or two of my weak spots. The first is the urge to slack off in group work, the second being the inability to understand project necessities, when I am within the safety of peers. Both points spawn from group project work, but the latter is what I would consider a familiar issue. It’s happened before. In both years of DI, there have been occasions where I gave up trying to understand important challenge aspects because of the people around me being able to tell me what it means and how I should be contributing. Not that I’m discounting myself as totally useless in a group, but individually I do not exactly help myself out.
Anyways, the first driving question, “ Why do politics matter and why should you bother? “
I had been trying to understand this throughout the majority of the project, and I’m not convinced I really get it. But simply put, in my words, politics are the thinking aspect of a society. Maybe politics do not grow a harvest or build factories, but over time a good political system will allow a harvest to feed the masses and create profit, or allow the factories to contribute to both the growth of the economy and the reduction of carbon emissions. Politics can be scorned or criticized, but there needs to be leader, or leaders in democracy. Or maybe democracy isn’t the answer. Well, a good political system might be able to find a solution.
The second driving question, “ How do we convince young people that they should vote? “
Another question I do not have an answer to. Young people, in our case the millennials and my generation, gen Z, are the most vulnerable to the future. Future policies affect us the most yet voting turnouts among this generation are getting worse, and nobody seems to care. What is to be done? Well, I don’t really know but the two options I can think of are to either create an incentive to vote ( a material valuable or systematic reward for voting ) or an enforced voting system, similar to that used in Australia or to a more dramatic extent North Korea ( obviously Canada should not copy North Koreas democratic, or non-democratic electoral system. A democracy mimicking the harshest dictatorship in the world for the sake of politics would be a national, and likely global, tragedy. However, when you look at simply the numbers ( 99% voter turnout ) you can’t say that isn’t impressive. Canada: 0 North Korea: 1 )
So there you have it. Whether you agree with me or not, it doesn’t really matter. And what authority do I have to speak on voting anyways? I’ve never voted and I can’t for another two or three years. But I now know at least how to vote, so if that’s the only thing I got out of this project then that’s fine by me.