As Australia heads towards another cycle of elections and political campaigning, I suspect we\u2019ve just had a glimpse of something we\u2019re going to see a lot more of \u2013 teenagers being drawn into political activism.<\/p>\n
Last week hundreds of Australian school students walked out of their classrooms to protest Pauline Hanson and One Nation.<\/p>\n
With the Victorian election approaching and One Nation attracting renewed attention nationally, it would be surprising if this were the last time we saw young Australians mobilised around politics.<\/p>\n
And I actually think young people being interested in politics is a good thing.<\/p>\n
We should want teenagers to care about the country they are growing up in, understand how our democracy works and have opinions about its future. <\/p>\n
I\u2019d much rather see a generation engaged with the political process than completely indifferent to it.<\/p>\n
But what happened last week raises a question that will become increasingly important if this kind of youth activism continues.<\/p>\n
How committed are we, really, to young people developing political voices of their own?<\/p>\n
Because supporting youth political engagement is easy when young people happen to agree with us.<\/p>\n
Would the adults cheering these students on have been quite so enthusiastic if hundreds of school kids walked out of class for a pro-Israel rally? <\/p>\n
What about a protest against the Labor government? An anti-abortion march? Or a rally against gender policies in schools?<\/p>\n
Would we still be hearing about brave young people finding their political voice?<\/p>\n
If the answer is no, then we\u2019re not really encouraging young people to think politically. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re encouraging them to think like us.<\/p>\n
As a psychologist, and someone who has spent most of my career working with children and teenagers, this is the part that concerns me.<\/p>\n
Teenagers are idealistic. <\/p>\n
They care deeply about fairness and injustice and they\u2019re working out who they are, what they believe and where they belong.<\/p>\n
They can become incredibly passionate about causes.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s exactly why the adults around them have a responsibility to encourage curiosity and critical thinking, rather than simply recruit them to a cause.<\/p>\n
And there were aspects of last week\u2019s protests that looked uncomfortably like the latter.<\/p>\n
The nationwide event was organised by the National Union of Students, with members of Socialist Alternative involved. <\/p>\n
Material circulated by High School Anticapitalists gave students practical advice about recruiting classmates, organising within schools and walking out of class. <\/p>\n
Students were even encouraged to wear their school uniforms because it would make them more identifiable to the media.<\/p>\n
There is a big difference between a teenager independently becoming interested in politics and political organisations actively recruiting children into a political movement.<\/p>\n
And if our aim is genuinely to develop politically engaged young Australians, surely we should be teaching them how to interrogate political ideas rather than simply giving them the slogans.<\/p>\n
Some of what we saw last week wasn\u2019t especially encouraging.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of school students chanted and screamed obscenities about a democratically elected senator.<\/p>\n
One student said: \u201cI would slap the sh*t out of that f**king bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another called for the guillotine for Hanson.<\/p>\n
All while Hanson herself was being denounced as a fascist \u2013 the irony is difficult to miss.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to like Pauline Hanson. <\/p>\n
You can find her politics offensive, protest against her, campaign against her and, eventually, when you\u2019re old enough, vote against her. That\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n
But fantasising about violence against a political opponent while accusing them of fascism isn\u2019t tolerance. And screaming abuse at people who disagree with you isn\u2019t an especially convincing call for peace.<\/p>\n
Political tolerance is easy when everyone around you agrees with you.<\/p>\n
The harder lesson, and the one I would much rather we teach teenagers, is learning to live alongside people whose views you strongly dislike.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d also hope we\u2019re asking them to think seriously about the political ideas they\u2019re advocating.<\/p>\n
There was something particularly strange about watching students openly advocate communism while exercising freedoms of speech, assembly and political dissent that communist regimes have historically been rather less enthusiastic about.<\/p>\n
If teenagers are going to advocate an entirely different political and economic system, then I hope the adults educating them are also asking them to explain what that system means, where it has been tried and how they imagine it would work here.<\/p>\n
Not because teenagers shouldn\u2019t be allowed to support communism, but because they should understand what they\u2019re supporting.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the kind of political education I\u2019d like to see more of \u2013 less telling young people what to think, and more asking them why they think it.<\/p>\n
What exactly has Hanson proposed that you oppose? <\/p>\n
What right do you believe is being taken away? <\/p>\n
What\u2019s the strongest argument made by the person on the other side? <\/p>\n
And perhaps the most important question of all: what evidence would make you change your mind?<\/p>\n
Being able to answer those questions is a much better indication of political maturity than being able to repeat a chant.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the simpler issue of school.<\/p>\n
South Australia\u2019s Education Minister said it was ultimately a matter for parents whether students attended.<\/p>\n
Of course parents make decisions for their children. <\/p>\n
But surely an Education Minister should also be able to say something fairly uncontroversial: during school hours, kids should generally be at school.<\/p>\n
There is nothing anti-democratic about that.<\/p>\n
You want to protest Pauline Hanson? Go for it.<\/p>\n
I just wonder how many students would have discovered quite the same passion for the cause if the rally had been held at 10am on Saturday rather than during maths.<\/p>\n
Political participation sometimes costs you something. <\/p>\n
If you genuinely believe in a cause, giving up your Saturday morning to support it isn\u2019t a bad introduction to civic responsibility.<\/p>\n
I want young Australians interested in politics. <\/p>\n
Let them protest, disagree with their parents and criticise Hanson, Albanese and anyone else asking for their future vote. <\/p>\n
Let them read Marx \u2013 just make sure they read Orwell too.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, let them encounter ideas they don\u2019t like and argue with those ideas.<\/p>\n
Teach them the difference between disagreement and hatred, and to resist the increasingly common idea that people who hold objectionable political views must therefore be objectionable people.<\/p>\n
If we only celebrate young people\u2019s political voices when they\u2019re saying what we want to hear, then it isn\u2019t their independence we\u2019re celebrating.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s their agreement with us.<\/p>\n