Democracy Workshop Session 1

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Zombies have taken over the world, eaten all the people and animals, and then starved to death because they couldn’t open tin cans or Tetrapaks.

There are huge piles of rotten zombie bodies that are starting to smell up the place.

There’s no electricity, no gas—that means no artificial light, no instant heat, no refrigerators, televisions, telephones.

There are no doctors or nurses, which is good because there are no hospitals left for them to work in, but it’s bad because without medically trained people even minor injuries and illnesses could be life-threatening.

While there’s plenty of a tinned food, everything fresh and frozen has rotted. Living on tinned food is fine temporarily, but long term it’s likely to cause poor health.

There’s no running water, turning on a tap does nothing.  Drinking water and water for cleaning isn’t easily accessible anymore.

Nobody is making decisions, no-one’s keeping the peace, no-one’s deciding right from wrong.

For anyone reading this and thinking that they've stumbled across a really bad Walking Dead fan page, don't worry. It's not.

This was the scenario for this year's democracy workshops, and as they are coming to an end I wanted to share them with everyone. So, once we established that the world, as we knew it, had come to an end, and the class group were the only survivors, we needed to think about what was required to survive (we identified the obvious things like food and water; heat for evenings and winter, and for cooking; someone to know first aid; security from any hungry dogs and cats who might be left; and someone to dispose of rotting zombie bodies, nice!) When it came to decision making, there needed to a system, a way of making decisions that everyone understood -- it doesn't work if half the group think decisions are being made by a simple vote and the other half think that there's a better way

the whole thing can come crashing down. 

So, we looked next at how decisions could be made, because that's what government really is, it's the decision making body for a group (whether that be a country of millions of people or 25 teenagers in a classroom).

Handout 2. Types of Government

Type	Description	Pros	Cons
Direct democracy	Everybody gets to speak / vote on every issue	Easy to see in action Simple to implement Everyone is equal	Can lead to ‘stalemate’ May be difficult to get everyone together
Representative democracy	People are elected as representatives.  These representative make the decisions on behalf of the people	Less requirement for everyone to attend	Not always representative
Meritocracy	The brightest and best make the decisions. Based on talent, intelligence or ability	Leaders are likely to be competent	Unrepresentative
Theocracy	A supreme being is regarded as being in charge, and their representative (a priest or shaman) makes decisions on their behalf	The ultimate is in charge	His representative on earth might not be listening
Oligarchy	A few people rule, usually based on power and influence
Dictatorship	One person in charge – usually power is kept by force	One person is happy	Everyone else isn’t
Anarchy	No-one is ‘in charge’, decisions are made organically, as and when things occur	Everyone has absolute liberty	There is no-one to enforce the laws

Every class (except one) chose direct democracy, the one remaining class chose anarchy.  More of that next time.