I started to think about politics this morning, and in particular Student Council. The reason I started to think of it was largely George Bush. Sure we all know the jokes about him, we all know that he is a horrible president, and may even become known as one of the worst presidents in US, history. But the fact remains that he got elected twice. So how exactly did he get elected twice when he is so horrible that no one in their right minds would have actually voted for him once?
The answer to this question I think can be found in Student Council. We largely know that politics is essentially a popularity contest, less about what they actually believe in and more about how “cool” the person seems to be on the surface. The person who wins Student Council is the same. This is the cool kid in school who wants to basically prove they are cool so they run for Student Council or perhaps class president and what not.
These people are largely dumb, inarticulate, they never talk about anything that matters, often they make fun of their opponents as a way to avoid real topics, but at the end of the day they seem more relatable to us or someone we should want to be like. Largely because perhaps they aren’t that geeky little know it all kid that they are running against. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone else?
And why shouldn’t it be like this in high school? I mean seriously does anybody even know the point of the student council and class presidents? I’m 30 years old now and have yet to figure it out other than as a way to groom students for a potential career in politics. But sadly this does seem to be what we are doing. This is the type of person we are getting in politics, and worse yet, we also seem to be grooming our potential voters to VOTE in this fashion for the future!
So the main question I think I have here is this really something that we want to groom our future into being? It hasn’t worked particularly well in the first place. I also wonder who in the student council or class president actually has the tendancy to turn out to be a president or even a senator? I don’t think any in my high school, or my friend’s high schools have been, or even aspire to be. So obviously even this part of the equation isn’t exactly working.
In a time where we are looking at cutting back various programs in schools in order to save on costs, why is this one not even talked about?