I teach at a public high school for "profoundly gifted" kids, and work pretty much exclusively with 16+ students. They're all very smart, and range from libs to somewhat better than normal libs (we had one open ML, but he graduated a few years ago). They all think Trump is a fucking dumbass. As with every election, a big crop of our seniors is going to be eligible to vote for the first time this year.

For the first time in the decade or so that I've worked here, pretty much every single one of them has said they don't intend to vote. They hate Biden almost as much as Trump, either because they condemn the genocide in Israel or just because they (correctly) believe that he has done nothing to actually benefit them. This is a population of kids who are much more politically engaged than your average teenager, and vote turnout in previous years has been high. I was actually very surprised at how many of them expressed contempt for the whole process this year, and indicated that they were totally uninterested in supporting Biden (and of course would not support Trump). I'm guessing this is part of a big trend that we're going to see this year, and I'm preparing myself for libs blaming young people--for whom Biden has done little but make their future demonstrably worse--for Democrats' loss.

I'm trying to convince all of them to vote anyway, just for some third party that speaks to them. Yesterday, we talked about PSL, Cornel West, the Greens, and Afroman for a bit. It would be incredibly funny to see young people reject Biden/Trump, and yet turn out in record numbers anyway. The narrative that kids are just too addicted to their phones to vote would fall apart. I'll keep working on it.

No real point here, just im-doing-my-part

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    ·
    9 months ago

    This may be a bad idea but maybe you could talk about Vermin Supreme and use that as an opportunity to explore the role of protest (& protest vote) and the limits of it, and things like critically analysing his platform.

    You'd be able to do a cost breakdown of his "a pony for every American" policy and discuss what it's satirising both from a historical perspective and a contemporary perspective as well as looking at what sort of shifts in the budget or what sort of tax policy would need to exist to make this a reality. You could also talk about it from the perspective of economic implications as a sort of Equine New Deal angle too.

    I think it would be fun but it would still teach a lot of serious lessons. If the students walk away realising that it's entirely within the realms of financial practicality to provide a pony for every American then you don't need to tell them that universal healthcare is also just as much of a possibility and you won't need to try to make a case for why presidential candidates claim that certain things are a financial impossibility.

    If a pony for every American is completely possible then when someone tells that student "It isn't possible to provide housing for all the homeless people", they're just going to laugh in their faces because if they know that pony is possible then a home is even easier and more practical.