Why make young people wait for democracy?

This piece began as a short closing address given at the end of the Step Up to the World | Tū māia ki te ao: Civics, Politics and Philosophy forum held in August at the National Library of New Zealand.

One thing this subject gives secondary students is a real way of contributing to the political process. Emphasis on real. Civics, Politics and Philosophy ought not simulate participation, as though students were waiting in the wings, preparing for the day when their views finally count. Students are already subject to political power. Decisions made by governments and other institutions shape their education, their environment, their access to housing and transport, and the opportunities available to them. They live political lives, even when they are denied full political standing.

Many young people do not seem to trust their own generation – to vote, to agitate, to claim a voice. If true, that is deeply concerning, and it is not their fault; it is ours. They do not reach that conclusion alone – they are repeatedly told that they lack the knowledge or maturity required for political judgement. Their views are welcomed when they are safely hypothetical or expressed through adult-approved channels. When those views become inconvenient, the response changes quickly, recasting the student as naïve, manipulated, or badly informed.

There is something wrong with assuming, before the discussion begins, that age settles the question of whose reasons matter. Adults are not reliable political reasoners simply by virtue of having remained alive for longer, nor does exclusion help young people develop the judgement they are said to lack.

The good news is that democracy does not just happen in the voting booth, or in parliament. It happens on the street, in homes, in universities and schools, in break rooms. In kitchens and bedrooms. Democracy depends on wider democratic culture – on what people notice, what they question, and what they will no longer accept without adequate justification.

The democratic process is the engagement in democracy: thoughts and conversations about values, worldviews, global politics and economics, the environment. A student asking whether sixteen-year-olds should vote, a class discussing whether climate strikes are justified, a family deciding how to act on the values they claim to hold, are all taking part in democracy. These are not rehearsals for democratic life later. They are democratic life now.

In Aotearoa, Make It 16 shows what this participation can look like. The youth-led campaign challenged the exclusion of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds from voting, taking its argument all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2022, the Court declared that the voting age of eighteen was inconsistent with the right to freedom from age discrimination, and that this inconsistency had not been justified. Whatever one thinks about lowering the voting age, the campaign was an exercise in political agency: young people identified a possible injustice, made their case, and required powerful institutions to answer it. 

The school climate strikes offer a different version of the same thing. In 2019, tens of thousands of students marched across Aotearoa, demanding stronger action on climate change. Critics argued that they should have remained at school. Such objections exposed the political question rather than resolving it. If schooling is supposed to prepare young people to respond intelligently to the world, what should they do when an intelligent response appears to require them to leave the classroom?

Most democratic participation is less visible than a court case or a national march. Students might make a submission on a proposed law, scrutinise a school policy, or ask why those affected by a public decision were not properly consulted. These acts may seem modest, but they develop the important democratic habit of refusing to regard existing arrangements as natural, inevitable, or beyond question.

For democratic conversations to have value, and for democracy to flourish in all corners, we need critical and creative thinking, emotional regulation, and empathy. Bravery in the face of challenge. Resilience. Communities need members who can test claims, who can sit with disagreement without turning away from it, who can change their minds when the reasons are good enough.

These are not just useful personal qualities; they are political capacities. A person unable to tolerate disagreement will struggle to participate in a plural society. Someone who cannot distinguish a reason from a slogan is easily manipulated. Someone who experiences any change of mind as humiliation has little hope of learning from others.

Civics, Politics, and Philosophy, and especially the philosophical process, when done well, has been proven to develop these exact skills and dispositions. How to disagree well, how to listen deeply with compassion and empathy. How to build and care for community.

There is now substantial international evidence on which to draw. Philosophy-in-the-classroom programmes in Australia have been associated with academic results above state and national averages, improved social behaviour, and little or no bullying. In Scotland, evaluations of philosophical inquiry found that students became more independent thinkers and more confident communicators. These examples show that sustained philosophical inquiry can become part of the ordinary work of a successful school, rather than remaining an occasional enrichment activity.

Done badly, of course, discussion can reproduce existing hierarchies. Confident students dominate, familiar forms of expression are rewarded, and “open debate” becomes permission for the already powerful to speak without consequence. Democratic education therefore requires more than allowing students to talk. It requires serious attention to who is heard, and whether student participation carries any real weight.

Nor should student voice be welcomed only when it confirms what schools already believe. If students are invited to think seriously about justice, power, and rights, they may turn that scrutiny towards education itself. Their conclusions may be incomplete or mistaken. They cannot be dismissed merely because they are inconvenient.

If education expects young people to become democratic citizens, it must take seriously the democratic agency they already possess. Education can and ought to be democratic.