Chapter 18
Education
Education is the single most important source of talented leaders, meritocracy starts in family and continues at school.
Schools teach basic to advanced knowledge on technical matters, literature, history and art, but they don't teach their context. It's like driving schools teaching you to replace spark plugs, air filters and engine oil, but not teaching you what an engine does and how it does it. Drivers fixing cars they know nothing about is not a good idea. Graduates shaping public life without knowing what it's all about and how it works is not a good idea either.
Schools completely ignore what's key to politics. They don't provide pupils with an understanding of what we know and how we can know it, or why we are moral and whether we should behave morally at all.
As a consequence, people don't have the first idea, they can't tell right knowledge from wrong, valid argument from invalid, right action from wrong. Those who "know" intuitively can't argue in favour of what they believe to be right, so they can't stand up for it. How knowledge and morality work is beyond not only the average citizen, but also people at the top. Those who know something in this field did not learn it at school and will not share it with fellow citizens.
In short: this is why politics sucks. Schools should teach people what we may or may not know and why, also why we tend to behave morally, whether we have a good reason for being moral, and what holds civilisations together.
The next few chapters will look at the brick and mortar of society: morality.
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