On one-level you can't argue with these facile platitudes in response to the shriek of un-used capacities. Banalities are, by definition, accurate. But if the answer to what Key calls the vulnerable children "space" was as plinkety-plonk as simply to install basic "education skills" like a software upgrade we could have fixed all our poverty and social problems by now.
Even Mr Logic himself, Aristotle, acknowledged arguments alone are not able to "encourage the many to nobility and goodness." That is, you can't out-think your feelings.
It seems to me that far from lifting people out of poverty, our mainstream education system frequently installs the negative persecutory voices which paralyse and torment us.
We have to find a way for our kids to feel a stable sense of self on a personal level, to instil a sense of goodness in them. But education is not the filling of a pail (national standards: don't get me started) but the lighting of a fire.
I think it is fair to say Key was no brazen fire-starter.
Blame the sunk-cost fallacy: economists (and others) keep doing something that doesn't work just because they have invested in it.
Anyway, my belief is that even beyond literacy and numeracy, by far the most important thing that children need to learn is how to self-soothe and teach themselves to feel safe. (Note to Ed: Sorry I know italics are obnoxious, but like many things this idea is too familiar to be visible, so in this case I feel the urge to shout) We all need to learn how to feel safe, and not just from others, but from our own persecutory voices.
This is not the same as actually being safe, because none of us can ever be assured of that.
Stress and discomfort and anxiety, and sickness and earthquakes and careless brutality, are part of life and why we all need to learn to live with our existential angst, and still feel safe. No one ever taught me what "safe" feels like, and I certainly didn't learn it at Melville High School.
"The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn't wishful thinking. It's the rule," said the wonderful AA Gill who died last week.
It has only been in the past couple of years that I have learnt how to do that "tucked in and kissed for good night" feeling for myself. It's not as easy as it sounds.
Some people refuse to be there for themselves because they are waiting for someone else (the government, fairy godmother, Paula Bennett, a right swipe on Tinder) to be there for them. It is scary to let someone be there for you when no one ever has.
We are ambivalent about being cared for, especially by ourselves. (Much of depression is self-bullying; we can be our own worst persecutor). But trust me, you can learn to validate yourself and give yourself praise, acceptance and approval that means more than any gold star you could get from your parents, teacher, friends or boss.
It takes time. Doing the right thing sucks for a long time before it feels better. Now that I have experienced it, I wish that I could teach my younger self, and other young people, the knack of doing this.
Oh, I know this sounds too esoteric for a government to concern itself with, when it's busy tidying up life's limitless messiness with neat policy initiatives, but if we really want to solve our problems couldn't we sometimes be a bit more daring?
If we accepted the widespread belief in the unchanging nature of personality is mistaken, maybe we could do more to help people to change. Learning to dis-identify from our habitual and familiar ways of thinking of ourselves could be the most important lesson you could learn.
You can emerge from your trance of unworthiness. So if I had been prime minister for eight years, I think I would have deeper regrets, that I didn't help people to learn to find their own goodness; to feel safe, to wake up.
