Let Our Kids Be Kids? Striking parents really get my goat

EVERYTHING, but everything, infuriates me about the Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign that organised a strike against the SATs exams for six and sevenyear- olds on the grounds that they are too stressful. The title itself irritates. Yes, yes, I know, kids are baby goats but that’s not what gets my goat in this case. It’s the underlying and utterly stupid idea that education must always be fun, enjoyable and playful.

For it mustn’t and it can’t. Any learning involves practice, repetition, hard work, frustration and tedium. You can’t acquire knowledge without putting in effort. Times tables, piano scales, handwriting, maths exercises, mental arithmetic, grammar exercises, learning vocabulary, irregular verbs – all are taxing but necessary and must be part of your schooling when you are very young. Otherwise it’s too late.

One protesting parent said she’d like her child “playing in the mud and finding mini- beasts not underlining adverbs”. But what’s wrong with underlining adverbs? I can be as sloppy with grammar as the next person but deep inside the memory of all those long ago parsing lessons lingers, for which I’m grateful.

And what about children who actively enjoy academic schoolwork? Are they to be made to feel failures because actually they prefer underlining adverbs to playing in the mud? Other countries take pride in young people’s academic achievement. Only in Britain do we seem to look down on it, branding them as nerds and geeks.

It’s almost a badge of honour among these stupid parents that exams are traumatic. Well if they are then frankly that’s their fault for making their children feel that way. Let Our Kids Be Kids? Rubbish. Education is a serious business. Why do we persist in pretending otherwise?