One of the greatest ironies of modern Australia is that we compel every adult citizen to vote, yet devote remarkably little effort to ensuring they understand the political system they are voting for. Compulsory voting is often celebrated as the hallmark of Australian democracy, producing consistently high electoral participation. But participation without understanding is not the same thing as informed citizenship. If democracy depends upon an educated electorate, then civic ignorance is not merely an educational failure; it is a constitutional one.
This concern lies at the heart of Dimitri Burshtein and Peter Swan's recent argument that Australian schools have largely abandoned serious civic education. Their concern deserves widespread support. A democracy cannot be expected to survive indefinitely if successive generations know little of the institutions they inherit, the principles upon which they rest, or the historical struggles that created them.
Australia possesses one of the world's oldest continuously functioning democratic constitutions. Drafted in the closing years of the nineteenth century and influenced by both British constitutional traditions and the United States Constitution, it established a remarkably stable federal system that has endured wars, depressions, constitutional crises and profound social change. Unlike many nations that have repeatedly rewritten their constitutions following revolutions or military coups, Australia has enjoyed an extraordinary continuity of constitutional government.
Yet how many school leavers could explain the separation of powers? How many understand why federalism exists? How many know the purpose of the Senate, the role of the High Court, the significance of responsible government, or the constitutional position of the Crown? Increasingly, the answer appears to be very few.
Instead, civic education has often been displaced by a curriculum that emphasises critique over comprehension. Students may spend considerable time examining colonialism, inequality, discrimination and historical injustice, all legitimate subjects worthy of discussion, while learning comparatively little about the institutional architecture that protects freedoms, limits governmental power and enables peaceful political change. They are taught to identify the flaws of Western democracies before they have learned why those democracies were constructed in the first place.
Every political system possesses imperfections. The Australian Constitution is no exception. Reasonable people disagree about the republic, the Senate's powers, federal-state relations and constitutional recognition. But meaningful criticism presupposes understanding. It is difficult to improve institutions one does not comprehend. A generation educated primarily to distrust its own constitutional inheritance without first understanding its achievements risks confusing reform with demolition.
Recent polling showing declining confidence in democracy among younger Australians should therefore concern us all. Many members of Generation Z express greater openness to authoritarian alternatives than previous generations. Some regard democracy as ineffective, corrupt or incapable of solving contemporary problems. Such attitudes rarely emerge in an intellectual vacuum. They flourish when citizens understand democracy only through its present frustrations rather than through its historical achievements.
Democracy is often disappointing because compromise is disappointing. Constitutional government is deliberately slow because concentrated power has historically proved dangerous. Federalism appears inefficient because its purpose is not maximum efficiency but the diffusion of authority. Rights exist precisely because majorities cannot always be trusted. These are not design flaws. They are design features born from centuries of political experience.
A balanced civic education would therefore neither glorify nor denigrate Australia's institutions. It would explain them. Students should learn not merely how elections function, but why constitutional limits exist. They should understand both the strengths and weaknesses of parliamentary democracy. They should examine competing political philosophies, conservative, liberal, socialist and libertarian, rather than absorbing only one prevailing ideological perspective. Above all, they should appreciate that democratic institutions represent hard-won historical achievements rather than inevitable features of modern life.
The objective is not patriotic indoctrination. Democracies confident in their institutions have nothing to fear from honest examination. Indeed, genuine civic education encourages thoughtful criticism because it equips students with the historical and constitutional knowledge necessary to distinguish genuine reform from fashionable rhetoric.
Australia's compulsory voting system makes this educational responsibility even greater. If citizens are legally required to participate in choosing governments, society owes them the knowledge necessary to make that participation meaningful. Otherwise, we risk reducing elections to little more than compulsory opinion polls populated by voters who possess only the vaguest understanding of the constitutional order they are helping to govern.
Democracy ultimately depends less upon ballot boxes than upon citizens who understand why those ballot boxes matter. Institutions cannot defend themselves. Constitutions cannot educate themselves. Every generation must rediscover the principles upon which free government rests. If schools fail in that task, ignorance gradually replaces understanding, cynicism replaces gratitude, and democracy slowly loses the very citizens upon whom its survival depends.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/07/the-lessons-our-schools-need-to-teach/