Children of the database

Henry Porter on CiF:

If Labour feels so strongly that liberty is part of the British story why hasn’t the government made it part of the national curriculum? One answer may be that if you bring up an entire generation to understand the extent of individual rights under the unwritten British constitution, it is far less easy to remove those rights.

Ha! Some hope. The citizenship curriculum doesn’t mention the existence of the European Convention on Human Rights, far less the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (that we ratified 16 years ago – shhh, I think it’s a secret).

Far from bringing up a generation to understand rights, the opposite is happening: they’re growing up to accept constant monitoring. As Andre Bacard said:

“If I wanted to build the surveillance society, I would start by creating dossiers on kindergarten children so the next generation couldn’t comprehend a world without surveillance.”