For New Zealanders to be losing our democracy may be due to sheer carelessness, ignorance, or even stupidity, not to put too fine a point on it.  However, is allowing our children to be academically short-changed, intellectually deprived and psychologically damaged forgivable?

The dumbing down of our education system has long left young New Zealanders performing abysmally in international literacy and maths assessment – compared to our high placings before the rot set in from the Sixties.