EDUCATION: "We do not regard all subjects as created equal."

Rather than discuss National's new "plan" for primary education, which as usual with recent Nat announcements sounds dramatic but delivers little (see for yourself the three rather banal points that form the centrepiece of the policy announcement), I'd rather talk about a school that actually knows what it's doing, and is delivering real success.

Lisa van Damme of California's van Damme Academy makes the chief point about the programme offered by her school that should be written in the sky above every New Zealand school. "First," she says, "I highlight the fact that ours is a core knowledge program." That is one key thing missing in recent years from New Zealand's factory schools.

Nowhere in our schedule will parents see the array of time wasters that clutter a typical grade school curriculum, classes that range from the traditional Phys Ed, Home Ec, and Wood Shop to sundry modern incarnations like Tech Ed, Sex Ed, AOL (Awareness of Other Languages), and Conflict Resolution.

At VanDamme Academy, we do not regard all subjects as created equal. We are ruthlessly possessive of the school day, and will give time only to those subjects essential to the child’s development into an informed, intelligent, rational adult capable of making good judgments and leading a fulfilled life...

Read more rare good sense at Lisa's Pedagogically Correct blog.

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