Back to school

RECENTLY, I was asked to help my granddaughter with her spelling. ‘They’re all magic e words,’ I said helpfully—or so I thought. ‘No, they’re split digraph,’ answered Charlotte. I have managed 76 years on this Earth, a degree from Oxford and 30 years of teaching English without having to clutter my head with such a concept. It is, no doubt, a useful contribution to the meta-language of linguistics, but for a six year old?

On the other hand, unlike Leslie Geddes-brown (Spectator, April 5), I did see the use of A-level geography when I was driving my horsebox towards a traffic jam and my son grabbed the map, shrieked ‘turn left now’ and got us there in time, after all. Jane Whiter, Hampshire