by Jan Goehring
Journey to the Land of Bean to find out how the jellybeans choose representatives to speak on their behalf. That's just one of the many educational tools offered by the Parliamentary Education Office in Canberra, Australia. The office was created in 1987 to develop parliamentary education resources.
As part of their effort, the office brings more than 100,000 school students to the capitol each year to participate in a parliament role play program. Participants learn the decisionmaking process first hand and have an opportunity to interact with members of parliament. These real-life experiences have been so successful that the education office has developed a role-play program to be used in local government council chambers and state parliaments all over Australia.
The Land of Bean is part of an online interactive program called KidsView designed to teach young people about democracy. NCSL has been involved in a similar effort and, in partnership with the Center for Civic Education and Center on Congress at Indiana University, recently launched democracykids.org that offers fun, interactive games and activities about American democracy, Congress and state legislatures.
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