Teaching Constitution at Schools

During an event, a point was raised whether it was a good idea to teach children about constitution, to which my co-panelist from a minority community expressed her concerns over the structural discrimination embedded in our constitution, and that instead of opening young minds towards inclusivity and the priniciple of non-discrimination, it may end up hardening up an already biased view point towards religious minorities here

The concerns are very valid, and are not stemming from out of vacuum. There's an entire history of how our marginalized have been sidelined from mainstream political decision-making processes, or how their concerns have been systematically ignored. We have examples of shelved debates/concerns over defining Objectives Resolution; seperate electorates, failure to effectively legislate over HR violations minorities; explicity (for one particular faith group) and implicitly excluding minorities from practicing or preaching religion; the misuse of blasphemy laws both on muslims and religious minorities; the parliamentary deliberations over replacing definitions of religious minorities with "non-muslim" identity; the ambiguity in consitutional interpretation over "equal status" of all citizens while excluding some from holding high public offices etc.

They all are in contradiction to what our inalienable rights should have been. When we are going to teach our children about the consititution, we need to understand what ambiguities are going to go into their feeble minds alongside.

I believe due diligence is required here; we cannot teach about constitution without first teaching about democratic principles of consenus-building, reforms in the law and the role of the parliament. Otherwise, its just going to be another indoctrination tool in the name of "constitution lessons".