Will Youth Engagement Save Democracy?

London, United Kingdom, November 16, 2008 --(PR.com)-- WORLDbytes the online magazine programme created by the feisty WORLDwrite crew launches its latest show on Friday 14th November with a stirring slot on youth engagement.

WORLDbytes’ young crew attended the lively debate at the Battle of Ideas festival entitled From the classroom to the voting booth to check out what the experts had to say about their generation’s engagement in politics.

Panellists: Lynne Featherstone MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Youth and Equality; Dr Tony Breslin Chief Executive, Citizenship Foundation, and Kevin Rooney Head of Social Science, Queens' School, Hertfordshire, aired their views in this hot debate.

Lynne Featherstone MP said the problem is ‘we are lazy’ and young people like to vote via text or a make a call from the couch for pop idol not visit an old fashioned polling booth. Dr Breslin argued for a citizen rich curriculum and author and teacher Kevin Rooney raised the roof by pointing the finger squarely at politicians’ inability to inspire. Rooney captivated the crowd with his accurate observation that young people had led many attempts at political change from the Bolshevik revolution to Tiananmen Square and had turned out en masse to vote for Obama. Schools he argued were not the place to solve political failure and were being dumped on to solve a plethora of problems by a disconnected and inward-looking political elite.

To find out more visit the press room at http://www.worldbytes.org/pressroom

The on-line channel and magazine programme WORLDbytes was created by a crew of young volunteers and aims to get behind the headlines and promote a people-first perspective on a wide range of issues. The programme’s credo is “don’t shout at the telly, change the message on it”.

The WORLDbytes online channel is available at www.worldbytes.org

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