Michael Rosen has written an article in the Guardian 23 January 2021, asking the Minister for Education, Gavin Williamson if he could tell parents what a fronted adverbial is? The article has led to an outcry of support on Twitter from parents, many of whom are professional writers, who are outraged by the primary school grammar curriculum, introduced by Michael Gove. They say that this prescriptive form of writing is inappropriate for teaching primary schoolchildren, and is stultifying creativity.
Even a letter to Santa Claus comes with a full set of instructions for its composition!
Many parents have become fully aware of these requirements through home schooling their children, during lockdowns in the pandemic. Forced to consult Google themselves to find answers to assist their children, they say that their children’s work has been criticised for not using enough examples of prepositions, relative clauses and of course, fronted adverbials. The ability to use the subjunctive is also required and punctuation is criticised.
In case you are wondering, what is a fronted adverbial, it is a word that goes at the start of a sentence and denotes the action following it. Everybody clear on that?
The primary school grammar curriculum could be said to be an example of the Government taking the proverbial .
