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The Government's new social mobility advisor, Katharine Birbalsingh, sparked a ferocious debate last week when she appeared to suggest that children might have "original sin". Children need to be taught right from wrong, said the famously strict headteacher. "Moral foundation is good". When people hear “original sin”, they usually think of the story of the Garden of Eden. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge. The pair disobeyed him. So, they were driven out of the garden - and all of humanity has subsequently lived with the consequences of their misbehaviour. This story is widely assumed to mean that children are born bad. If that were what the Catholic Church taught, it would be miserable and unfair. But it's not. Catholic teaching expresses the complete opposite - that human beings were created to be good. You might see Original Sin as an attempt to explain why, despite this potential, we keep making mistakes. The Church says that when Adam and Eve ignored God and ate the forbidden fruit, humanity was left with an inclination to rebel and do the wrong thing. It might not be the biggest things: I remember, as a child, that I hated chores and would deliberately do them so badly that I'd never be asked again. Tell me to prune a tree and I'd cut off all the branches; dust the living room and I'd upend a vase. I'm sure I wasn't the first kid to do such things: my ancestors misbehaved, too. And the idea that we have a connection to past sins, that the world is affected by them and we have to repair the damage, is not exclusively religious or “medieval”. It is very contemporary. Boris Johnson has spoken of Britain’s guilt for the genesis of the industrial revolution, which created a “tea cosy of carbon” that he says envelops the Earth. Many of the delegates to the Cop summit in Glasgow feel that the richest nations, the ones that developed first, should carry the largest burden for cleaning up the environment. The ecological crisis is serious, but it is not hopeless. There is always hope for healing - as long as we don't let guilt over our sins weigh us down and stop us from changing. Indeed, I find there to be an energising *equality* in the concept of Original Sin. It accepts that everyone is flawed, and that we all need help to be better people. Good teachers provide that help to children by encouraging their talents and kindness. Ultimately, being a moral human being is not a lottery of birth. It is the project of a lifetime. One that we all work on together.