Political vacuum

Teen Times: I can't tell you who the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment is. I wouldn't be able to tell you who the Minister for Health and Children is, and I definitely couldn't tell you who runs the agriculture and food department. I do know our taoiseach is Bertie Ahern though, and I am pretty sure we have a president by the name of Mary, but that is where my knowledge of politics ends.

I am an 18-year-old male student with a very limited understanding of how and who runs my country. What bothers me is that this doesn't bother me.

Last month a power was bestowed upon me. A voice from way up in the clouds spoke to me, saying: you have the power to topple a government, you can decide who will run your country, where the hard-earned money of four million people will be spent. It said: you can vote.

Amazing as this power was, and despite how privileged I was to be granted it, it meant nothing to me. Why would I vote? How could I vote? I wouldn't even know what I was voting for.

I suppose, if a gun was held to my head and I had to vote, I would probably vote for the Green Party. They like trees, and I guess it would be good if we had more trees.

If the Government, whoever or whatever they are, want young people to actively partake in the running of our country, they should open our eyes to the wide, expansive world of politics.

I have spent 14 years of my life being educated on the wonders of differential calculus, the lateral moraines of the Alps and the functions of a particle accelerator, but never once have I been introduced to politics.

As a student who does not do history, and has had no clue of the policies of a party or any other aspect of politics, I feel it is wrong then that I, at the innocent age of 18, be thrown into a whole world of referendums, scandals, peace processes and treaties.

Although as a teenager this is hard for me to admit, this problem is not entirely someone else's fault. I could have been reading articles, newspapers and magazines in preparation for the day I turned 18. But I will willingly confess that I need to be pushed.

It is a fact that the majority of teenagers will always flick to the sports or entertainment sections of a newspaper before the politics.

Awareness needs to be raised - otherwise soon we will have an epidemic of politically illiterate teenagers on our hands. They will, in turn, be voting. A handful of them will eventually run our country. And then it will be too late.

Brendan O'Driscoll (18) is a sixth-year student in Blackrock College, Dublin

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