From Education

[edit] Grade parliament or junior high school parliament

[edit] Motivating pupils to become politically active

Pupils who were against a social internship, kindergarden internship or any other type of mandatory, extracurricular activity, for example because they couldn't see what connection it had to school education, would be motivated to get likeminded representatives elected in order to personally avoid the activity.

Pupils in favor of a social internship could vote for the abrogation of a mandatory social internship and thus support the other side, because they could, quite appropriately and truthfully, support the view that it didn't have to be mandatory.

If a pupils' party that was against a social internship was elected into a grade parliament or school parliament the representatives could be required to debate their position with the opposition.

The opposition could request that the elected representatives should prove that they had understood the arguments in favor of the opposition's views by defending that position while the interviewers would pretend to challenge their own position but always give in to reason. The rationale is that the representatives would have proven they had actually understood the arguments by bringing forward all the arguments of the opposition. By defending the opposition's views against the opposition the representatives would also have made a convincing attempt to see the other side. This procedure could be made possible by an unalterable school policy and could be deferred to a high school parliament because it seems generally useful and representatives of the high school parliament would be able to take a nonpartisan position.

A strong argument for a social internship would be that it was a good motivation for otherwise politically uninterested pupils to become politically active and try to influence school politics. The representatives could probably be brought to concede that becoming politically active had been a valuable part of their education and that, if it had been benefical for them, it was likely to be beneficial for others to try to change school politics and that they thus had a moral obligation, especially towards the pupils they were supposed to represent, to leave the irritating internship or other activity in place or to reinstate, possibly after a while, another policy that was sufficiently irritating to motivate pupils to influence school politics.

If the elected representatives could not be "corrupted" the opposition would have to accept that state of affairs for a while but could later try to get their own representatives elected, this time not voting for the other side.

In a school parliament for several grades (e.g. for junior high school / Mittelstufe) there could be a continual challenge for the higher grades to create some political entertainment for the pupils of the lowest grade, who would not yet have had the opportunity to participate in a larger parliament and influence school politics beyond their own class or grade.