NEW STATESMAN: How Brexit changed the way politics is taught

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“Young people adapt very quickly”

Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester

I teach a course to third-year students every year on elections and voters in Britain. They’re an engaged bunch because it’s an elective. Teaching the course has been a valuable reality check for me, because I think it has helped me to remember that the very polarised, very heated stuff we see in Westminster and on politics Twitter isn’t necessarily reflected everywhere. Even among students who study this as a choice, you don’t see that to anywhere near that same extent.

Students have remained open-minded about the complexities of what’s involved in the conflict over Brexit in the broader electoral conflict. You always get students who are already engaged in politics, they’re activists, but the other thing I’ve always found, and that hasn’t changed, is they are very respectful of each other’s views and keen to hear other views to their own.

I’ve had students both supportive of Brexit, Ukip activists, Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem activists. They listen to each other. They’ll quite passionately disagree, but it’s open-minded, respectful disagreement. It’s very much what I like about my job. It’s very easy, seeing this through the lens of elite debate, that we’re reaching some unbridgeable crisis of tribal divide. But these bright young people coming through don’t behave like that when they’re put together in a room.

That’s a wonderful thing, in a way: they, more than most, have an awful lot to worry about with the current situation but they don’t let it spill over into an unthinking hostility. I’ve never had a shouting match in my classes.

You get to feel pretty old, even at 39, teaching 21-year-olds every year. Young people adapt to new realities very quickly. It’s the only reality they’ve ever known. The students I’m teaching now have no memory of a world before the financial crisis, and have really only been politically aware since Brexit. At 39, the EU referendum doesn’t feel that long ago. If you’re 21, it must feel like an aeon. They adapt to these new realities very quickly. The previous reality is second-hand to them. They didn’t live through it as adults. That’s why I don’t think they get as heated as older people do.