History at key stage 3 (Year 8/9)
Unit 16: The franchise why did it take so much longer for British women to get the vote?
Section 2: Why did some people have the vote in 1815 and not others?
|
|
Objectives |
| Children should learn: |
- about the principles that currently underpin western democracy
- to analyse the social and cultural factors that excluded different groups of persons from the franchise in 1815
- to understand and to articulate attitudes and principles different from their own
|
Activities |
|
Outcomes |
|
Children: |
- Help pupils to understand two fundamental principles which tend to affect current western democratic societies' beliefs about voting: (i) responsibility and (ii) freedom. Ask them
Why should all 18-year-olds have the vote? Ask them to think of people who do not have the vote. Ask them to think back to earlier units where they encountered institutions of 'slavery' or 'serfdom'. Exactly why were these people not considered eligible to vote?
- Give pupils lists of facts or fact cards about who could and could not vote in 1815. Discuss principles,
eg property owning, legal freedom, beliefs about responsibility, which underpinned each. Remind them about continuity from earlier periods they have studied.
- Using a parallel timeline activity, remind pupils of (or introduce pupils to) what was happening in France.
- Check pupils' understanding by interviewing individual pupils posing as characters from the period who must explain to their puzzled interviewer why it is a shocking idea that women and/or many men other than landed gentry should vote.
|
|
- explain why different criteria are sometimes employed to include or exclude people from the franchise
- demonstrate an understanding of the reasons why different people could or could not vote in 1815
- present, in role, reasons why extension of franchise would have seemed shocking to many people in 1815
|
|
Points to note |
- Links could be made to any current school activity in which pupils are involved in a voting or other democratic activity - elections to a school council, elections for class captain, mock elections, etc. Ask pupils to consider whether or not a situation could arise in which pupils might be deprived of a vote.
- Citizenship: links with work on characteristics of parliamentary and other forms of government and on the electoral system and the importance of voting.
- The year 1815 has been used as a focus in this section to pick up the effect of the end of the Napoleonic Wars on British society and politics. Teachers should make this clear to pupils.
- Links could be made with unit 10 'France 1789-94' and particularly with the corresponding societies that were established, contributing to the government's fear of revolution in Britain.
- Links could be made with unit 15 'Black peoples of America' specifically where slavery and civil rights issues are addressed.
- Language for learning: there are opportunities in this part of the unit for work on word families and their roots,
eg democracy, democratic, demos. This may help some pupils gain a better understanding of various terms used here and elsewhere in the unit.
|
|
|
This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
|
|
|
