According to this page of the Parliamentary website, teachers and lecturers who are training and educating students in matters that relate to politics have a fantastic range of resources open to them. There is a outreach team of Parliamentary Educators that can come out to the schools, colleges or Universities, the educators can visit the Houses of Parliament for a free one-day seminar or a tailored CPD session, there is an online CPD and a more in-depth teacher ambassador programme. These sort of resources seems to make a great deal of sense as we attempt to educate citizens about how Parliament works. However when I saw the page the thought that came into my mind was how much work goes on to help educate MPs in the ways of how education, or business or the voluntary sector operate. Indeed how much provision is made to enable them to understand the work of local government and the rest of the public sector such as police, fire and rescue. It seems just as vital for MPs to understand elements of society they have no experience or hands on knowledge off, as it is for teachers who are educating people in matters of politics to have access to Parliament. Indeed arguably because they are our law makers the need for them to understand society beyond their own personal knowledge is vital. One of the greatest weaknesses of many MPs is that they believe their role is to communicate what their party or their government is focused on, which is rather like the traditional idea of salespeople who arrive to direct people in their thinking as opposed to those of us who arrive in a given setting intending to learn about how things already work before we can attempt to offer solutions for our potential clients. Of course calling on MPs to spend time learning how society works will limit their capacity to earn money from second and third jobs, but if done well it will vastly improve their skill and performance as an MP which should be their first priority.