Current Petitions

I cannot disagree with a word that Murdo Fraser said, but we might consider another aspect of the issue. As I understand it, education is not about ensuring that people know things; although some useful things have to be taught along the way, it is fundamentally about people understanding that there are ways of solving problems and getting the information that they want, because there are structures and logic out there. Therefore, citizenship education should be about ensuring that people know about the legal and advice processes. Only the most expert lawyer knows his way around consumer law—those of us who have studied it know that it changes like everything else and one rapidly gets out of date. Teaching people the details of law is surely not the primary issue; it is about people learning to understand how society operates, what kind of information they are looking for, where to find it and what help they might need.

No, you are absolutely right; that was not a flippant comment and you should not take it back. You are right that those things can be learned only once we know how to read.