I AM just about to start my 13th and last year of school.

In those years I have learnt the basic tools for life: how to read and write and how to subtract, multiply, add and divide.

While these skills are all useful and essential, there is a gaping hole in the curriculum that needs to be addressed immediately for the good of the country: politics.

As a confessed political and news junkie, it astounds me at how little some of my fellow students know about Australia’s political system.

Many don’t know that Australia has a prime minister, not a president. They have no idea that our representatives are elected to parliament through preferential voting and they look at you as though you’re from another planet when you try to explain that Australia has a Senate.

They are completely oblivious to how this country operates.

I started thinking about this after attending a speech last year by politics professor and The Advertiser columnist, Dean Jaensch. He said, “The average Australian voter scares me.”

The average Australian voter has little idea about what they’re doing at the polling booth and the way in which their vote affects the country.

Many are quick to say that young people don’t know about politics because they simply aren’t interested and don’t want to know, but I’m not convinced.

The lack of knowledge imparted to young people carries on into their adult voting years and unless they actively seek to learn about politics it is likely that their knowledge won’t grow that much.

People many years my senior often ask me questions about politics. I don’t take it as a form of flattery that I usually know the answer; I take it as worrying that adult voters don’t know the answer themselves.

Politics is not a game.

We’re talking about how this country is run and who governs it; about the people who make the laws that dictate what you can do in this country; about making sure that Australia is in an acceptable financial position; about the issues that matter to you. Every person over 18 must enrol to vote and if they don’t fully understand our political system, how can we trust their judgment?

The education system exists to set young people up for life as an adult. It is clear that the curriculum is not adequately meeting that obligation. Little time has been spent learning about politics in my schooling.

I spent a short time studying the workings of Parliament in Year 6 and it was not until last year when I took the elective subject of Year 11 Legal Studies that any further time was dedicated to politics.

*Caleb Bond is a 15-year-old ­student about to begin Year 12 at The Heights School.