Grammar is something that hasn't actively been taught in schools since comprehensive schools were introduced and so only a few linguistically interested adults will be able to do well on this test. Most of us don't know our subjective clause from our adverb but luckily are still able to tell our arse from our elbow.
Normally these quizzes set parents against each other. Some say, "These poor f-ing kids. I only got two right. Give them back their childhood." While others say, "What? How can you be proud that you only got two right? Only a thicko would be happy with that. What are our teachers doing? All children should know this stuff. How will they cope in life if they don't?"
This is proving to be different. Most adults finally agree on something. If you can use a preposition phrase do you really need to be able to label it as such? I remember a similar conversation between my friends after we'd watched a new sex education film to be shown to our children. A parent was very cross about the idea of her 8 year old being introduced to the word clitoris.
"Why? Why does she need to know that at eight?" she shouted at the teacher.
"It will save confusion if she ever needs to go to the doctors about a problem with it," the teacher replied matter of
factly.
I mentally ran through my not-so-exhaustive knowledge of clitoral disorders and decided that if I had any of them I would still probably say, "I've got a problem down there." I might even just mouth 'down there' while pointing.
The poor teacher might not have been happy with eight year olds suddenly calling each other 'Clitorises' in her class either but teachers don't choose the content of education; that's the job of the government. Teachers who never learnt the grammar rules and labels themselves as as a child are now required to instill a message of their importance into the children they are teaching. This is going to be a tough sell.
When I watch 'clever celebrities' on TV, such as Richard Osman or Steven Fry, I am always struck by how much trivia they seem to know. I wonder if they can define all the determiners in a sentence and then I wonder if it really matters and I start to get philosophical about the point of education in the first place. I used to tell my school-reluctant son that he had to go to school to try out lots of different things in order to find the one that he'd like to spend the rest of his life doing but I'm not sure the Government would agree with me.
In the school where I work (not teaching grammar, you will be relieved to hear), there are six year olds who know more facts about dinosaurs, or birds, or Romans, or snakes, or flags than I could ever know. Actually, not flags because that was my six year old self's specialist subject. Some of these children will never be clever according to standardised tests because the Government isn't interested that you know that a velociraptor had thirty teeth.
Schools work really hard to teach children some of the things they think are just as important: being polite, eating with a knife and fork, playing outside without getting mud everywhere, queueing (a very important British skill learnt in Primary school), riding a bike, swimming, life saving, building an igloo and dodging snowballs (if we ever get any snow). They do this while trying to cram the test facts into those little heads.
This week the oldest children in our school were learning life saving skills in the hall. The music room can only be accessed through the hall, so every class had a glimpse of their future. They were all fascinated. They knew they were missing out on something, even if they weren't quite sure what. Trying to engage children to learn about the pentatonic scale and ostinato patterns was tough.
In a quiet moment a child said, "They're doing sex in there."
"No, they're not!!! Lifesaving! They're doing lifesaving."
"Oh, that's what she told me," he said grumpily nudging the little girl next to him.
"I said sex education. I thought it was," she protested rolling her eyes at me.
"No. Lifesaving."
Loud music started: Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.
The temptation was too great not to go and look through the glass door. He bounced up and I followed him to encourage him to sit back down.
"See, I told you!"
Fifteen children were leaning over dummies, kissing them and bouncing up and down in time to the music.
I suddenly saw the Government's point. I would have been less embarrassed if the children in the hall had been learning how to avoid a dangling participial.
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