It is that time of year again, when anxious parents meet earnest teachers to talk about examinations, homework and their child's unfortunate habits. They focus on children's personal strengths and weaknesses: the curriculum is taken as a given over which neither has much influence.
But this year, as Hong Kong moves towards much-heralded curriculum reform - and as expectations for the new chief executive reach new heights before his first policy address - it is time to reflect on what we actually want our children to be taught, and to compare that with what is happening in the classroom.
Like many parents, I am scared by the rootlessness of modern youth. The ties of family, religion and nationalism have weakened. Adults may welcome the greater choice of lifestyles that is a result of the loss of past certainties. But the ability to exercise this choice wisely requires discipline, a solid core of factual - that is, academic - knowledge and the ability to reason from it. This is what our schools should give children; this, together with the love of knowledge for its own sake.
Against these criteria, what is Hong Kong's score card? Bearing in mind that the classroom is no panacea - that good manners, good health and common sense are for the family, not the school to inculcate - let us look at four key disciplines.
Most Hong Kong schools still fulfil the famous requirement of Plato's academy: no entry without mathematics. And although some of the teaching methods adopted, especially at the primary level, have become a little fuzzy, the inherent nature of the subject limits the amount of 'dumbing down' that is possible.
Language is more complex. The nature of the Chinese language is such that it has to be taught rigorously: this remains an important safeguard for the whole curriculum. English fares less well, and it is unrealistic to expect improvement, now that students even in England are deprived of much of their heritage by a failure to teach English literature.