This time in respect of childhood, upbringing producing mature citizens and the like: "The welfare-to-work nostrum isn't enough. It has served importantly as a corrective to a passive attitude, but, insofar as it presumes that economic productivity is where we all ought to end up, irrespective of our nurturing and forming responsibilities, as a society it isn't enough. We want to see a society which is composed of adults, people who can choose and act and change, who can hope, see that they have made a difference, who can be sorry when they fail, who can empathise. It doesn't happen by accident. ... If we go on producing grown-up infants, we can hardly wonder why different sorts of violence and dysfunction exist in our society"
He goes on to say that if we make economic activity our sole measure of success, then we are impovdrishing our ability to produce mature adults with all the effects that has on crime and so forth. So far so good; question is, of course, how to enable and facilitate such a vision.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Archbishop launches attack on government:
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