SCT’s Educational Programme

This page sets out the prospectus for the educational programme which SCT proposes to develop with the University of Leeds.

The Prospectus

Speakers’ Corner Trust proposes to produce a series of educational resources to support people participating in the work of the Speakers’ Corner Trust. These resources, which are being developed by Stephen Coleman , Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds , will be unique in three principal respects:

1. They will be aimed at adult citizens and senior secondary school students. (Most ‘citizenship education’ material produced in recent years has been aimed at school and college students taking the newly-devised Citizenship curriculum).
2. They will emphasise the importance of vocal and active citizenship. Rather than concentrating on how civic and political processes work, they will seek to encourage deliberative, expressive and participative forms of citizenship.
3. They will be linked to the work of the Speakers’ Corner Trust (SCT). Rather than promote free speech and debate as abstractions, the resources will point people in the direction of specific loci of democratic interaction.

Although SCT’s aims in promoting discussion and debate are not limited to political issues, the need for such educational material is reinforced by some recent survey research on political engagement conducted at the Institute of Communications Studies at Leeds University. (This is unpublished research and should not be cited without permission.) In a nationally representative survey of 3,229 UK citizens, we found

about faith in democracy and the political process, that

• Over one in ten (13%) are very dissatisfied with democracy, with non-voters in the 2005 general election twice as likely (22%) to be very dissatisfied with the working of democracy as those who did vote.
• Most respondents (58%) stated that they have no faith in politics to solve their problems. Women (62%) are significantly more likely to think this than men (54%) and those in the C2DE band (61%) have significantly less faith in politics than those in the ABC band (55%.) 18-24 year-olds (25%) are the least likely to express faith in politics as a way of solving their problems.
• 78% of respondents believe that what they think about political issues is unlikely to influence government and 75% believe that governments don’t care what ordinary people think.

about participation in opinion-forming and decision-taking, that

• 37% believe that ‘talking about politics is too complicated for most people’.
• Almost a third (32%) of respondents state that they ‘leave politics and current affairs to other people.’ There is a significant gender difference here, with 24% of men and 39% of women distancing themselves from politics in this way.
• 90% of respondents state that they have no involvement in the affairs of their local council. Reasons for not participating fall into two categories: 56% of people stated that they lack a personal interest in participating (‘just not interested’; ‘too time-consuming’; ‘too inconvenient’), while around a third (34%) are put off by a belief that their council is not interested in them and that participation would be inconsequential.
• Only 7% of respondents belong to political parties (a decline from about three million in the 1960s to around 600,000 today). 30% claim to be strong supporters of a political party, rising to 43% amongst people aged over 60 and falling to 19% amongst 18-29 year-olds.
• Asked about activities that they had engaged in within the past twelve months, only 7% had gone on a demonstration, 8% had joined a pressure group, 11% had attended a political meeting, 15% had sent a letter to their MP and 16% had sent an email to their MP.

but about the potential to generate higher levels of participation and confidence, that

• Just over a third (35%) of the population believe that they have a civic duty to discuss important political issues with other people.

• Over half (54%) of all respondents say that they find politics interesting, (but class and gender distinctions are striking in this regard. 62% of people in the ABC band claim to find politics interesting, compared with only 45% from the C2DE band. 63% of men say that they find politics interesting, compared with 45% of women).
• Around a third (34%) of respondents consider themselves to be ‘pretty knowledgeable about politics.’ (This figures rises to 47% for men and falls to 22% for women. 40% of those in the ABC band consider themselves to be politically knowledgeable, but only 26% of those in the C2DE band.)
• Asked how often they speak to others about politics, there was a broad range of responses. 38% of respondents claim to talk about politics with people at work at least once a week, while almost half (46%) rarely or never discuss politics at work.
• 42% of respondents claim to talk about politics at least once a week with friends outside of work, while a third (33%) rarely or never do so.
• Over half of the respondents (52%) discuss politics with other members of their family, with one in four (25%) never or rarely doing so.

On the basis of these findings, we propose to produce a series of short pamphlets, each of which would include

1. a text summary of about 1,000 words
2. three or four boxed case studies
3. a list of online and published further resources
4. photos intended to illustrate the points being made

Each pamphlet will be available on the SCT website as a PDF file as well as in hard copy. The first four pamphlets would focus on

1. the history of free speech, specifically in Britain but also discussing other countries. It will show how important freedom of speech has been to people who were denied it and how both official and unofficial spaces for public debate were established.
2. the protocols of face-to-face public debate. In the past people learned about how to conduct a meeting from participation in trade unions, political parties and clubs. How many of those rules of conduct are appropriate for twentieth-century debate? How can rules of civility be engendered so that everyone gets a hearing? What are the best ways of arriving at a consensus or decision?
3. how debates and discussions have led to change. Political efficacy depends upon a close relationship between participatory activity and tangible outcomes. There are many examples of communities finding a common direction through dialogue. These need to be publicised.
4. new technologies of citizenship, including the internet and mobile telephony. How could/have these been used to generate public debate and networks of informed citizens? A range of practical examples will be offered, as well as general guidance on how to conduct discussions in an online environment.

We see these four pamphlets as the first of a series of perhaps as many as twelve.

As well as the pamphlets, we envisage a second stage of the project in which a DVD is produced to provide a visual account of the material covered in the pamphlets. This would be made available for free download from the SCT website.

Also in the second stage of the project, we envisage a website which would be used by SCT participants to

1. debate local, national and global issues (with sections devoted to each) and
2. discuss examples and problems of debating, with a view to generating a national conversation about how best to conduct debate and achieve outcomes.

(See Blumler and Coleman’s Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commons in Cyberspace [IPPR, 2001] for an outline of what this web space might look like.) Once the website is up and running, we shall make additions to the pamphlets, encouraging readers to follow up in various ways by interacting online.

As outlined above, the educational programme will be disseminated through SCT’s website. We will also provide the resources to other organisations for access from their sites. In addition, the organisers of local Speakers’ Corner inititiatives will be encouraged to distribute the dvds and pamphlets to their key target audiences. Finally, we will discuss the prospects for the wider distribution of the materials through the education system with the Department for Children, Schools & Families.

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