Youth Politics

"If you're not a liberal when you're 25 you have no heart. If you are not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." Attributed to Winston Churchill, but he probably never said it. Sounds good anyway. As a teacher of AP students in U.S. History, I naturally get into politically charged issues all of the time. If you teach history, you've got to get into the muck. One of the things that I do in the first week of class is give them an issues self-diagnostic survey that when scored they can place themselves along the right-left political continuum. I find that even at the end of the year, they still remember the activity and where they ended up.

Throughout the year, they often ask me what I think of various hot button political issues, or even generally where I fall along the spectrum. I pride myself in remaining as neutral as possible, giving fair treatment of all sides of the issues and allowing them to decide for themselves. I tell them I don't really care which side they pick on almost anything, as long as they can back it up with argument. I think I do a good job, because throughout the year they think they have me pegged, and they are all over the map: "you're a Republican," "you're a Democrat," "you're a commie," "you're a fascist." I usually get that last one after giving them a particularly difficult exam.

I do feel like I owe them an honest answer, since they are so open in class about their own beliefs throughout the year. So each year I always make them a deal. On the last day of class, I will answer almost any question they have about my own political ideology, such as it is. (I refuse to answer the abortion or gay marriage question, but I'm pretty open to discussing most anything else). I'm quite touched that that by the end of the year my political beliefs have become a parlor game of sorts for them. Touched because they actually are interested. This year I started the discussion by giving them my voting history in every presidential election since 1992. They can generally figure it out from that.

One of my favorite students is starting a Young Republicans group on campus and he asked me to be the faculty sponsor. I turned him down in order to maintain my veil of neutrality, but I did tell him I could be an unofficial, shadow advisor. I gave him a reading list of Charles Krauthammer, William F. Buckley Jr. (suggesting he make all members sign the Sharon Statement), Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Locke, Friedrich Hayek, etc. That should give them a solid foundation.

One of the questions I give them on their final exam is for them to tell me which political party that we studied this year most aligns with their own personal beliefs, and why. As in, they have to recall and explain that political party's ideology accurately in order to get the question completely right. Polling about 130 AP students, here were the results:

Democrat: 42%
Republican: 28%
Libertarian: 2%
Communist: 1%
Socialist: 1%
Green: 1%
Independent: 6%
Undecided: 17%

There were some interesting choices from the past:

Whig: 2%
Democratic-Republican: 1%
Populist: 4%
Nazi: 1%

NOTE: The Nazi student explained that he liked the party, minus Hitler, genocide and the racism. Kind of hard to separate, but he explained that he admired the strong nationalism and top down government control of every aspect of life. I guess more accurately he should have said "fascist," as it could be a less racist version, a la Italian fascism or Spanish fascism.

I know that doesn't add up to exactly 100%, but I rounded the numbers.

If you throw the Libertarians in with the Republicans, you get a surprisingly strong 30% conservative. I find that interesting as it bucks some stereotypes and assumptions, since this is a group of teenagers (generally considered to be heavily liberal) and my students are overwhelmingly minority, mainly Hispanic. Hispanics are also assumed to lean overwhelmingly liberal (unless you are Cuban, but I only had one Cuban student).