The British government has this week announced plans to ban social media access for under-16s. Ministers describe it as a historic intervention to protect children. Newspapers are full of discussion about algorithms, screen addiction and online harms. Yet as I watched the announcement unfold, I found myself asking a different question entirely. Why are we once again arguing about what children should be prevented from doing rather than what they should be taught?
The discussion is presented as a matter of national importance. Ministers speak gravely about online harms. Newspapers speculate about restrictions and enforcement. Experts are summoned to television studios. Committees are established. Reports are commissioned.
But all of my experience as a student and teacher tells me that we are arguing passionately about the wrong problem. At sixty-five years of age, having attended good schools, won a scholarship to Oxford, taught for decades and worked in several countries, I have reached an uncomfortable conclusion: almost nobody ever taught me how money works.
Nobody explained investing. Nobody explained compound interest. Nobody explained pensions. Nobody explained the long-term consequences of inflation. Nobody explained the relationship between taxation and public services. Nobody explained mortgages beyond the most superficial level. Nobody explained the astonishing difference between acquiring assets and merely consuming income.
Yet these are not specialist concerns. They are among the most important forces shaping the lives of ordinary citizens.
They influence where people live, when they retire, whether they accumulate wealth, how vulnerable they are to economic shocks and, ultimately, the degree of freedom they enjoy throughout their lives.
The strange thing is that this educational failure is almost invisible. Some parents complain if their children leave school unable to read Shakespeare. Politicians worry if socially constructed examination results fall.
Universities debate decolonisation, inclusion, safe spaces and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, millions of young adults enter the world with little understanding of debt, investment, taxation, pensions or wealth creation.
Nobody seems particularly alarmed. But as a teacher, I find this extraordinary. And as a citizen, I find it deeply disturbing.
As someone who grew up in a working-class family, I find it difficult to avoid an even more uncomfortable observation.
Those who grow up in affluent families often learn these things anyway.
They hear conversations around the dinner table. They observe parents discussing property, investments, inheritance and taxation. They absorb financial knowledge almost by osmosis.
Those from less privileged backgrounds are often far less fortunate.
The result is that schools, which are supposed to reduce inequality of opportunity, usually end up reinforcing it.
I studied languages, theology, literature and philosophy. I do not regret a moment of it. Education transformed my life and broadened my horizons in ways I shall always be grateful for.
Yet if I am completely honest, my grandfather, a builder with far less formal education, may well have understood practical wealth creation better than I did. He understood property. He understood value. He understood patience. Most importantly, he understood that money is not primarily about income. It is about what income becomes over time. That lesson alone may be worth more than half the curriculum I studied. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was five years old, so he could never pass on his wisdom.
The question therefore is not whether children should be protected from harmful content online. Of course they should.
The question is why governments find it easier to regulate TikTok than to ask whether the curriculum itself is preparing young people for adult life.
Why is there endless discussion about screen time but comparatively little discussion about economic literacy?
Why do we devote thousands of classroom hours to subjects that many pupils will never use again while allocating almost no serious time to understanding mortgages, pensions, inflation, taxation, investing and economic reasoning?
And why, after decades of educational reform, do so many intelligent, capable and highly educated adults still feel financially illiterate?
These are not merely personal questions. They are political questions. They are social questions.
And they are ultimately questions about power.
A population that cannot critically evaluate economic arguments is easier to persuade, easier to frighten and easier to divide. It becomes dependent upon experts, commentators and politicians to interpret reality on its behalf.
A population that understands economics is harder to manipulate.
Perhaps that is why the seven economic myths I recently encountered fascinated me so much. I will share them here next week.
These seven myths didn’t just reveal something about economics, but they revealed something about education.
And perhaps, more importantly, about what education still fails to teach.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
— W. B. Yeats
If Yeats was right, then perhaps we need to ask whether we are lighting the wrong fires.
On my way to the shops recently, I came across a small group outside the mall. They wore Guy Fawkes masks and held laptops showing videos of animal suffering. Their banner read: 
