A group of authors, including the UK’s most recent Carnegie medallist Tanya Landman, who are preparing to contact the education secretary, are complaining about the damaging effects of disencouraging simple writing in the primary school classroom. This I can testify for, since I was one of those affected by the curriculum’s drive for flowery vocabulary and sentences stuffed full of similes and metaphors. Now, in the midst of GCSEs at secondary school, I’m finding myself undertaking a dramatic detox in my writing; facing my fear of “boring” words like “big” and “small”.
Arguments against the petition mostly revolve around the fact that the curriculum is not aiming to turn six-year-old children into award-winning novelists, but is simply hoping to expand their horizons on the grammatical and vocabulary front. But really, what is the point in teaching “Wow” words (as they are commonly known) if you don’t know how to use them? It truly is near impossible to unlearn what was ingrained in your mind as a child, and shaping these overloaded vocabularies later on in life is no easy task.
I know this, because at the age of eight, I was told never to use the word “and”. It could only ever be “additionally” or “also”. Then went “so”; my writing should be littered with “therefore” and “consequently” instead. Following that was “said”, “then”, and “after”. “Once upon a time” was a sin, and “before” would lose me my break time. Eventually my sentences resembled overgrown flower beds: complex and messy.
Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t have got into my selective secondary school if I’d chosen the creative writing task in the English 11+ exam. When I walked into my first high school English lesson, feeling confident that I would be in at least the top half of the class, I was floored. The subject which I had once prided myself for excelling at, was now causing me great turmoil. Each assessment was handed back with red biro sprawled across the bottom of the page: “tone it down”, “don’t go overboard” or “your writing needs cleaning up”. Each assessment still is handed back like that, and even though I’ve been told for almost four years unwaveringly, when I’m writing I can’t seem to remember that squeezing in every single fancy word which enters my mind won’t please the teacher.
The very essence of writing is that it is an expressive and personal outlet, so should we really be limiting it at all? Some argue that a child’s creativity is stimulated by the exploration of advanced vocabulary, but there really is a difference in being allowed to delve into the world of fancy words, and being forced to use them.
Some of the best books have been written directly and simply, to stunning effect. Ernest Hemingway is well-known for his minimalistic approach to writing, influenced by his journalistic career, and Franz Kafka’s books often explore deep issues related to humanity, whilst retaining a seemingly lucid tone. It is not a crime to write directly and bluntly. In fact, scattering stunning imagery and figurative language amongst a sea of simplicity can have an even larger impact. Either way, it’s better than a book crammed full of waffling nonsense, which is what I found to be encouraged in my early education.
As someone now struggling with keeping my prose simple and fluent, I can only say that I regret that the primary curriculum left so much to the secondary. If I had not had engraved in me a long-lasting fear of all things simple, I am certain that I would be a much better writer today. Or, at least, I would find it much easier to write a concise and effective creative piece. I agree with the authors campaigning for change in the curriculum that reading and communicating more is the key to embedding a varied and controlled vocabulary, and that completely banning generic wording from the classroom is not the way to go.
Teenagers and children’s and teen books site members: do you have an opinion on, or experience with the curriculum that you’d like to share? Email childrens.books@theguardian.com or get in touch on Twitter@GdnchildrensBks and we’ll add it to this blog.