A Level Politics AQA To do: 1. Read the specification on the AQA website: https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/politics/as-and-a-level/politics- 7152/introduction 2. Purchase copies of the textbooks that we will be using throughout the course. (you may be able to buy them cheaply from the last class) In year 12 we will be using: UK Government and Politics (fifth edition) for AS/A Level by Philip Lynch, Paul Fairclough, Toby Cooper https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/product?Product=9781471889233 US Government and Politics (fifth edition) for A Level by Anthony J Bennett https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/subjects/government- politics/products/16-18/us-government-and-political-participation-fifth- ed 3. Read and consider the extract below the questions, you may want to reference it in your next task 4. Write an essay (maximum 4 sides of A4) answering the question: ‘The study of government and politics should be compulsory in secondary education’ How far do you agree? PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain Oxford University graduates in philosophy, politics and economics make up an astonishing proportion of Britain’s elite. But has it produced an out-of-touch ruling class? by Andy Beckett. Published in The Guardian on Thu 23 Feb 2017 06.00 Monday, 13 April 2015 was a typical day in modern British politics. An Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), Ed Miliband, launched the Labour party’s general election manifesto. It was examined by the BBC’s political editor, Oxford PPE graduate Nick Robinson, by the BBC’s economics editor, Oxford PPE graduate Robert Peston, and by the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Oxford PPE graduate Paul Johnson. It was criticised by the prime minister, Oxford PPE graduate David Cameron. It was defended by the Labour shadow chancellor, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Balls. Elsewhere in the country, with the election three weeks away, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, Oxford PPE graduate Danny Alexander, was preparing to visit Kingston and Surbiton, a vulnerable London seat held by a fellow Lib Dem minister, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Davey. In Kent, one of Ukip’s two MPs, Oxford PPE graduate Mark Reckless, was campaigning in his constituency, Rochester and Strood. Comments on the day’s developments were being posted online by Michael Crick, Oxford PPE graduate and political correspondent of Channel 4 News. On the BBC Radio 4 website, the Financial Times statistics expert and Oxford PPE graduate Tim Harford presented his first election podcast. On BBC1, Oxford PPE graduate and Newsnight presenter Evan Davies conducted the first of a series of interviews with party leaders. In the print media, there was an election special in the Economist magazine, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Zanny Minton-Beddoes; a clutch of election articles in the political magazine Prospect, edited by Oxford PPE graduate Bronwen Maddox; an election column in the Guardian by Oxford PPE graduate Simon Jenkins; and more election coverage in the Times and the Sun, whose proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, studied PPE at Oxford. More than any other course at any other university, more than any revered or resented private school, and in a manner probably unmatched in any other democracy, Oxford PPE pervades British political life. From the right to the left, from the centre ground to the fringes, from analysts to protagonists, consensus-seekers to revolutionary activists, environmentalists to ultra-capitalists, statists to libertarians, elitists to populists, bureaucrats to spin doctors, bullies to charmers, successive networks of PPEists have been at work at all levels of British politics – sometimes prominently, sometimes more quietly – since the degree was established 97 years ago. “It is overwhelmingly from Oxford that the governing elite has reproduced itself, generation after generation,” writes the pre-eminent British political biographer, John Campbell, in his 2014 study of the postwar Labour reformer and SDP co‑founder Roy Jenkins, who studied PPE at the university in the 1930s. The three-year undergraduate course was then less than two decades old, but it was “already the course of choice for aspiring politicians”: the future Labour leaders Michael Foot and Hugh Gaitskell, the future prime ministers Edward Heath and Harold Wilson. But Oxford PPE is more than a factory for politicians and the people who judge them for a living. It also gives many of these public figures a shared outlook: confident, internationalist, intellectually flexible, and above all sure that small groups of supposedly well-educated, rational people, such as themselves, can and should improve Britain and the wider world. The course has also been taken by many foreign leaders-in-the- making, among them Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Australian prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. An Oxford PPE degree has become a global status symbol of academic achievement and worldly potential. The Labour peer and thinker Maurice Glasman, who studied modern history at Cambridge, says: “PPE combines the status of an elite university degree – PPE is the ultimate form of being good at school – with the stamp of a vocational course. It is perfect training for cabinet membership, and it gives you a view of life. It is a very profound cultural form.” Yet in the new age of populism, of revolts against elites and “professional politicians”, Oxford PPE no longer fits into public life as smoothly as it once did. With corporate capitalism misfiring, mainstream politicians blundering, and much of the traditional media seemingly bewildered by the upheavals, PPE, the supplier of supposedly highly trained talent to all three fields, has lost its unquestioned authority. More than that, it has become easier to doubt whether a single university course, and its graduates, should have such influence in the first place. To its proliferating critics, PPE is not a solution to Britain’s problems; it is a cause of them. Extra tasks! - You’ve got enough time to do them In preparation for our first section of the course, you could look into the following historical sources of the UK constitution: The Magna Carta 1215 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWCw4v9yvj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYwLCqCeh5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S8WqxpAVl8 (there are many more documentaries/short videos on youtube that you can watch) The Bill of Rights 1689 (don’t be confused by the American Bill of Rights – they are different things!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx9N0mrTPtw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXvvbmpz5i0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mypTm0VRF4g Make notes/spiderdiagram showing: What were they? What did they state? How and why did they come about? How did they impact the governance of UK? How did they impact the governance of other nations? Extension – how have they impacted society in the UK? (hints – development of parliament, justice system, tension – there is so much you can link them to!) There are so many political documentaries online too, you could watch some in preparation: look on BBCiplayer, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube If you have any questions, email Miss McManus [email protected] .