Should students be more involved with politics?

When is the right time to start participating and being an active listener to politics? Most students get their ideas of politics from their parents. It’s from our parents that we hear the most political opinions whether it’s active or passive listening. After a while we start to develop our own beliefs and opinions on politics but as high school students, it fairly rare that we address them in conversation.

It’s understandable to think of a thousand other things to talk about with someone and politics just isn’t one of them. But it isn’t just about that. It’s the fact that students don’t want to talk about it. And those feelings can occur for various reasons.

One reason I believe that students refrain from involving themselves more with politics is that they don’t want their political beliefs to intermingle with their relationships with people. Having someone's opinion of you change because of your political beliefs is something that could possibly refrain you from wanting to talk politics. However, understanding politics even before you’re able to vote is an important aspect of life when you transition out of high school and into the real world.

For the past recent 2018 Midterm elections and the 2016 Presidential elections, there has been an increase of younger voters (18-29) participating in the elections. Voting is a right given to all American citizens under the Constitution and its important to understand the value of being able to vote in elections before exiting high school.

High School students tend to be wrapped up within themselves and things on social media that they often finding themselves missing the big picture. Instead of being aware of which states are banning abortion or even being aware of who our own state governor is, students tend to pay more attention to who was singing at Coachella instead.

Notwithstanding, the idea is that students aren’t doing enough to be more aware of what’s happening within their own borders. To further the education of politics for their students, teachers or other facilitators should be advocating the idea of reading national news from the “Washington Post” or the “New York Times” inside of classrooms.

If you’re a student, the best time to actually involve yourself a little more with politics is when you feel comfortable enough in whatever party or platform you support without giving half-hearted explanations as to why. Not only that, allowing yourself to genuinely care about these issues that bother you. Not something that is just the center of popular controversy.

There are plenty of political and socio-economic issues that are going on within the United States and as students are maturing and growing, so should their knowledge of what’s going on outside the walls of their high school.