Do you remember grammar and

spelling lessons? Do you remember those "reading comprehension" tests and "composition"?

They came up in conversation a couple of days ago. This morning there is an article about the NAPLAN results in the state newspaper. (For those of you in Upover the NAPLAN tests are a supposed nationwide testing scheme to see how well students are doing in school.) 

Now my use of grammar is far from perfect. I know that. I sometimes go back and look at what I have written. I cringe. I like to think my spelling is reasonable. Others may differ. 

I remember those grammar lessons. They were not interesting. They were deadly dull in fact. Even the Senior Cat had difficulty making "Subject, Verb, Object" idea interesting. It was something which had to be taught. It was something we had to learn. I know a good deal more now than I knew when I did the "PC" at the end of primary school.  I also know that I knew far more then than the average primary school student knows now. 

"We don't do it like that," is something I have been told more than once. No, they don't. Why would they? 

The same is true of spelling. We had "spellers" or "spelling books. There were lists of words in them which were expected to learn to spell. That was not a problem for me. If I had not achieved ten out of ten for the weekly spelling test I would have been docked what little pocket money we did get for doing chores around the house. My brother was treated the same way. 

Right from the start of school we had "daily diaries". These were books in which we wrote a single sentence. It could be about anything. If we used a word we could not spell the word would be written down for us to copy. I was expected to learn to spell those words too. Was it true of other children? I suppose it was. I also suspect they kept their daily sentence very simple. Mine tended to be longer and more complex. I remember my first sentence one school term, "My mother had enough poppies in the garden to sell some to the florist". Yes, I was a little brat. Other children might have wanted, "Mum grows flowers."

Apparently they no longer do that sort of thing. I am not sure what they do. Their "readers" seem to be a series of very short books. T... across the road was very quickly bored by those but they serve a purpose. Our readers were supposed to last all year. I would read them in the holiday period before school started. After that I was constantly in trouble for reading something else in class. 

All this makes me wonder how I would have done on a NAPLAN test. Do some children do less well than they might because they are simply bored by what is on offer? Are those tests really testing anything? Yes, they must be. I know enough about such testing to know that the results might pick up some children who are falling  behind. It is also likely that some children appear to be doing less well out of sheer boredom. I think that is a problem too.