PYTHONPATH on OS X

[mhearne808[insert-at-sign-here]gmail[insert-dot-here]com]

I'm missing something major here.  I'm trying to add a directory to my
python path using the PYTHONPATH environment variable, and it's being
ignored by the Python interactive shell.

Below is a capture of what I did.  Note that my newfolder appears
nowhere on the list of directories in sys.path.  How do I get Python
to pay attention to my shell variables?

Using bash on OS X 10.4.10.

%:~ user$ echo $PYTHONPATH

%:~ user$ PYTHONPATH=/Users/user/newfolder
%:~ user$ echo $PYTHONPATH
/Users/user/newfolder
%:~ user$ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Aug 10 2007, 10:46:58)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5363)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
['', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/
setuptools-0.7a1dev_r56320-py2.5.egg', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/ipython1-0.9alpha2-py2.5.egg', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/SQLAlchemy-0.4.0beta5-py2.5.egg', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/
site-packages/MySQL_python-1.2.2-py2.5-macosx-10.3-i386.egg', '/usr/
local/lib/python25.zip', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5', '/usr/local/lib/
python2.5/plat-darwin', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/plat-mac', '/usr/
local/lib/python2.5/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages', '/usr/local/lib/
python2.5/lib-tk', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/
lib/python2.5/site-packages', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/
PIL']