Do you know what a split digraph is? It sounds like a painful muscle tear that DIY dads incur trying to put up a curtain rail.
Well, it’s not that. A split digraph, as my daughter (just turned six) explained to me recently, is when the “ee” or “ue” sound in a word is separated by a consonant. Words like “flute” and “complete” are examples of this grammatical phenomenon.
I am, of course, impressed by my little girl’s learning achievement but also surprised that after half a century on the planet, a decent degree from a good university and a 30-year career in journalism, I had never heard of a split digraph.
If I say so myself, I’ve managed quite well without this knowledge. Yet for primary-school pupils aged five and six, knowing about the split digraph is an essential part of their tougher national curriculum.
A few weeks on, my daughter has largely forgotten its importance. “That’s because we’re doing polysyllabic words now, silly,” she explains. Of course, I should have known. Polly who?
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“I’ve managed quite well so far without knowing what a split digraph is
This is just a whiff of the grinding school day that little children must endure under Nicky Morgan’s new curriculum (private schools and academies are exempt). There are relentless spelling tests: six-year-olds have to be able to spell “sincere”, “successful”, “gymnasium” and “focused”. My son, who is eight, is constantly having to write sentences using “openers” and “connectors”, subordinate clauses and similes.
One of his classmates, an avid reader, told his mum this weekend that the things that made a good story were “verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, similes and metaphors”. It took some time to elicit that what he really likes is a story that can inspire pictures in his head “so it’s like your own special film”.
Mrs Morgan is the new Thomas Gradgrind, hellbent on sucking the joy out of learning, reducing reading to a tick-box exercise of right and wrong facts and turning our primary schools into battery-hen exam factories. Seven-year-olds across England and Wales will next week be forced to undertake a week of tests, placing enormous pressure on their young minds.
There is a groundswell of anger against this miserable attempt to turn children into deskbound drudges. The #LetOurKidsBeKids campaign is asking parents to keep children off school tomorrow as a protest. I will be joining them.
Sean O’Neill is chief reporter