Citizenship and accounting need to be kept apart in Brooks debate

THE way I remember it, in secondary school our first class on civics and citizenship became our last class on civics and citizenship very quickly.

The teacher spoke about what a citizen was, explaining that being born in a country made you a citizen of that jurisdiction, subject to its laws and rules, with rights and obligations, when one of my classmates — a man who now holds a very responsible position in life — asked if, hypothetically, one were born on an airplane that was directly over the border separating three different countries, right over the line dividing them, then what country . . .

We were told to take out the accountancy textbooks and it was balance sheets and ledgers from then on.