Lesson 2: Good guys, bad guys?

Living Democracy » Textbooks » Growing up in democracy » UNIT 6: Power and authority – I am the boss! Am I? » Lesson 2: Good guys, bad guys?

What is the position of politicians in a democracy?

Learning objectives	The students understand the idea that one person can represent a group of people. They develop an understanding of the concept of delegation of power and accountability.
Student tasks	The students compare their ideas with a schema of political representation in a democracy. They discuss their views of politicians and compare them with the opinions held by other people. They conduct short interviews in order to do this.
Resources	Schema of political representation, pencils, paper.
Methods	Individual work, pair work, plenary discussion.

Lesson description

The students are presented with the schema of political representation (handout). The teacher introduces the concept of delegation within a state and explains that just as there are class heads, there are also heads of states. They have power delegated to them.

The teacher provides information about the schema and explains the system of representation. The process of electing representatives is different in different types of state system (for example, in a direct democracy or an indirect democracy).

Working on their own, the students fill in the spaces on the handout. Then they form pairs and discuss what they know about politicians and exchange their thoughts about them. The following questions might be helpful:

What do you think about politicians?
Which politicians do you know?
What should politicians do?
What should politicians not do?
Why do so many people think politicians are bad?

The students are then given the task to conduct interviews and ask other people for their opinions about politicians and their competences. They write down the questions they want to ask people in their family, in their circle of friends, and in their community. The teacher instructs them to make notes on people’s answers. Some suggested interview questions are:

What competences should a politician have?
Why do you think politicians are often considered to be bad?
What characteristics should a politician have?
What characteristics should they not have?

The students conduct the interviews after class and bring the results to the following lesson.

Lesson 1: Superhero?

Lesson 3: One person does everything, the rest do nothing?

Download