Following the Department of Education’s recent appeal to retired teachers to return to the classroom, to help fill staff shortages caused by Covid, I can’t help but wonder if there has been any effect on the curriculum?

Will the Class of ’22 suddenly display unexpected skills in rhetoric and cursive writing?  Will they be able to cite poems from memory, and be able to distinguish their preposition from their conjunction?  Will they be able to do unseen Latin translations?  And excel at woodwork, metalwork and needlework?

The three ‘R’s of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic will replace the three ‘C’s of Climate Change, Coding and Cyber Security.

And there will be a movement to colonise the curriculum.

And, of course, if there is any resistance to these changes, it will be met with the ultimate physical force: corporal punishment.

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree fondly recalls his own school-days.