ABSTRACT
Grüss Gott! I address you from the top of an Alp, quite my favourite place at this time of year, though it rarely actually happens. I got imprinted with love of the Swiss during my teens when my Dad worked in Berne, and every few years the urge arises to grit the teeth and pay Swiss prices for the clockwork wonderfulness of a Swiss week. The trains work, the postbuses work, the snow-blowers work, the woodpiles are neat, the shopkeepers solicitous. And for those who observe the tangled world of education it is profoundly reassuring to watch the ski-schools. From my perch on the nursery slopes, I have been studying them as a seductive model of a particular kind of educational perfection.
