Apropos of the state supplying food to poor children in schools. Everyone seems to assume that the reduction in learning ability seen in children who come to school without food is due to their being hungry. Thus, feeding them will improve their long-term ability to achieve academically. However, the MacDoctor has seen little or no [...]

I view the proposal to feed children in decile one and two schools with a great deal of trepidation. While I am certainly not opposed to feed starving children, I suspect the proposed bill is more likely to be just another form of creeping welfare. Just providing blanket feeding for all these children produces one [...]

It is probably just as well that the Idiot at No Right Turn does not allow comments on his blog, because the drivel that he writes would attract the very worst of trolls. And terse comments from the MacDoctor. Take one of today’s offerings: John Key’s response to introducing charter schools despite never having campaigned [...]

Now here is a very bad idea. Only students doing courses that benefit the economy should receive interest-free loans, according to a suggestion from a leading accountancy group. The idea in KPMG’s Agribusiness Agenda 2011 was prompted by “long-term decline” of graduates entering agriculture. While I have sympathy for the agribusiness sector, because it is [...]

The Myth of Fairness The words “Fair” and “Fairness” are among the commonest words used by the Left to control debate. They are very powerful. Most people would like to believe that they are fair-minded and have a sense of justice and fair-play. Certainly unfair treatment gets a person’s hackles up and provokes an indignant [...]

(Hat Tip: Nick D. Kim for the artwork) John Armstrong wonders this week where Phil Goff is getting all the money to fund the billions of dollars worth of promises he is making. John Key once surmised that Phil Goff was using the pixies at the bottom of his garden to finance his promises. However, [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. Educational spam always feels to me like it has an additional agenda besides increasing a newspapers sales. Certainly, the left wing blogs have all taken to calling Anne Tolley out for this one: Top school’s revolt against NCEA One [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article Has anyone noticed how much the Herald is rapidly turning into a Labour propaganda pamphlet? It seems they are only too happy to blindly publish any press release from Labour with barely an alteration. I fully expect the parliamentary [...]

The Boards of 225 schools have said they will refuse to implement the achievement targets of the New National Standards next year. This is hardly a great shock. It has been quite obvious that the problem with the new standards from the teacher’s union perspective is not the standards themselves, but the achievement targets that [...]

There is no doubt which side of the world-view divide the Herald on Sunday sits. They report: Sacked for teaching King Lear Shakespearean tragedy has become high farce, after a Christian high school sacked a teacher for using a “morally defiling” King Lear text in class. Suzette Martin, 40, was sacked from the private Westmount School [...]