Reading Parliament
I want to use contemporary media reports and current events in my teaching, but it doesn’t always work as well as I want it to work. Reading the British press last month gave me some ideas that might help out this year.
Let me set the stage. I like to keep track of efforts to improve the basic institutions and procedures of democratic governments around the world. It’s very easy to get used to the system and the institutions that you grow up with, and you stop asking the “Why do we do this?†questions. (For example, why do we usually vote on Tuesdays?) And if you don’t ask the ‘Why do we do this?†questions, you probably don’t get to the “Should we keep doing this?†questions. So I try to keep an eye on the ways that other democratic nations handle their elections and lawmaking. As a result, I was like a kid in a candy store last month when the House of Commons in the United Kingdom began debating a proposal to change the structure of the other house of Parliament, the House of Lords.
But I’m going to put off the discussion of the actual proposal for a day or so, because I realized that the process I was following to try to figure out what was going on was something I really needed to pay attention to. Like I said, I’m pretty used to the American system of government. So when I read a story in the newspaper or online about the American institutions, I have a ready store of information that I can use to add context and fill in the blanks. This is a good thing, because most of the time, the press is relying on its audience’s background knowledge so that each story doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel.
But a lot of my students don’t have that background knowledge, and it makes following the news a frustrating experience for them. And as I was reading the Guardian’s coverage of the House of Lords debate, I realized that I didn’t have that knowledge either. The British press was assuming I had the kind of day-to-day familiarity with British government that would come from, say, living in Britain. This gave me an opportunity – if I paid attention to how I filled in the gaps, maybe it would help me improve the process for my students.
One thing I realized is that I was skipping over some things that I didn’t understand completely. I had read several stories about the current British government’s effort to reform the House of Lords, but I had been reading them in the context of the relationship between two parties in the UK’s government, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. For a long time it didn’t matter to me that I didn’t fully understand the actual proposal – I registered that the two parties had different ideas about it, and that was enough to keep reading about how those different ideas would affect their ability to work together. So knowing what I was interested in was a big help in getting past the details that might have frustrated me.
Eventually, though, I became interested in the proposal itself. And the news reports generally did a good job of mentioning what the new changes would be. That makes sense, because what would be new pretty much meets the definition of news. But the news reports were not explaining how things are in the present. Why would they? It hasn’t changed, it’s not news. So I had to go beyond the news reports to get the full context. And I realized that I needed the full context in order to understand the importance of the story, because I realized that I could not give a clear answer to one important question: What power does the House of Lords have that makes reforming the House of Lords important? I knew I needed to go outside of the press reports to expand my background information, and I had framed a specific question to help guide my search. This was big, and I’m going to come back to this idea.
The search took longer than I expected it to take. Some online news resources, like the BBC, have a lot of articles of background information that they make available. I clicked on a lot of links, but could not find a succinct explanation of the House of Lords’ power.
I did a Google search for the House of Lords and found myself on the official site of the UK Parliament. Again, it took a lot of clicks to get through the simplified version of parliamentary procedure that they explained. And the answer to my specific question was hard to find – no one would nail down exactly what power the House of Lords has. I did a Wikipedia search, and finally, between that and the Lords site, I got together a working idea. But the only reason I could do that is because I had noticed a key term that kept coming up in my reading: the Parliament Acts. Those had sounded important, so I made sure to look for an explanation of the Acts in the articles I was reading.
Now here’s the thing – I spent about an hour doing this, at least. I would not have done well if this were a classroom assignment where I needed to find the answer before the end of the class period. So I have to remember to frame my questions and assignments properly.
One of the things I think I’m going to do to that end is to use the start of the year to build up the shared frames of reference. In the past I have had students read articles and answer questions about it or maybe paraphrase. I think what I want to do at first is emphasize the idea of the article as a launching pad. Have the students read it, tell me what they got from it, and then identify names, places, terms and so on that they didn’t fully understand. Maybe ask them to form one specific question they would like to get an answer to. Then, once they’ve identified a term or concept as a stumbling block, we can talk about it or review it. Hopefully as we go through this a few times, the students will start to form some connections and have an easier time with future articles.
I’m still working out the process here, but I’m really glad I had the experience. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious, but I missed it for a long time. When we stretch out of our comfort zone to learn something new, we should always keep one eye on how we’re learning it, so we can be prepared to use those techniques again in the future.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.