Character Education Scotland
David Lorimer writes: The 6th international CitizED conference took place in St Andrews over the first weekend in July, with over 70 delegates from all around the world and from as far afield as Japan, China, Australia Canada and the USA. This gave a genuine cross-cultural flavour to the meeting. For instance, I attended a presentation by two Chinese academics whose focus was on the need for human rights education in the context of developing democratic institutions. Interestingly, there are now 384 million Chinese online, which represents most of the young urban population. There were some good exchanges on the nature and definition of character from John Haldane and David Carr, which people can follow up in the new publication edited by James Arthur - Citizens of Character - where they both have articles. The first Sir Bernard Crick Memorial lecture was given by Prof David Kerr, who had been a close colleague and friend. Crick's emphasis had been on political literacy and active citizenship. Only a few days before he died he was delighted to have a letter printed in the Edinburgh Evening News complaining about a new system of bollards. There was an excellent conference dinner on Saturday evening, addressed by Lord Watson and Sir Menzies Campbell. Sir Ming reflected that in his three fields of sport, politics and law, winning was crucial, but that in the original vision of the Olympics, participation was a key. Barnaby Brown then gave us a taste of Scottish music on the pibroch and triple pipe so that international guests were even better able to appreciate the spirit of the place where they had gathered.
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