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I'm here with a CONTROVERSIAL OPINION: grammar is wonderful and should absolutely be taught to kids at primary school. The current curriculum is, to my mind, much, much better than what was going on when I was at school, and here is why...
1. Grammar isn't a killer of creativity: it is the toolset any writer uses to be creative. To say that it kills creativity is like saying that learning to talk is stopping a child's freedom of expression. It's an absolutely vital first step.
2. Of course that doesn't mean we should only learn grammatical rules and not also have fun. The current curriculum, however, does not seem to be saying that we should. It has lots of creative writing, and asks for imagination in all manner of different pieces. Some imitative...
...and some purely original. The imitative ones involve looking at other great books and having a go too, which is another great way of learning of course! But it doesn't function that well on its own. I know: I tried it. It was much easier to imitate once I got grammar...
...and then, as a direct result, much easier to start being creative for myself. It was, contrary to some perception, freeing.
3. Practising something also does not limit freedom of expression. I can absolutely guarantee that there is not one concert pianist in the world who got where they are by just PLAYING pieces. In order to improve, you have to practise. To break it down and repeat, or play scales.
It's the same for any skill. It involves a blend of the technical stuff and the fun stuff. Whether that's football drills around matches, or learning to operate on people before actually doing it. None of it makes you worse at the end result. Quite the opposite.
4. That means that when you are seeing your child performing an exercise where they write a piece with six adverbs in it, you are watching them practise. They are not being expected to write pieces with six adverbs in for the rest of their lives. It is also easy to forget...
...the boring side of learning we did at school, too. I can guarantee that even when we did less grammar and it was less thoroughly taught, we still did boring stuff in English lessons. None of that has killed our ability to be a creative individual as an adult. Though that said,
... I'm positive that some of us had really bad experiences with individual teachers that left their mark. I'm not underplaying this at all, but this is a different issue.
5. To give another example of this - let's imagine for a minute that this isn't English we are talking about, but maths. Being a really brilliant mathematician (or physicist, or engineer) involves creativity. But it also has as its basis the foundations of number...
... People don't go into careers in mathematics or physics or engineering because they hate maths. They have some form of love or enjoyment of it, and this is engendered despite all the basics they have to learn when young. In fact, it might be BECAUSE, in part, of those basics.
Stephen Hawking's absolutely original take on the universe had maths as its basis, and he wouldn't have been able to have that original take without it. As just one example.
6. Children are not just learning to be novelists at school. They are learning to be writers of all kinds. Some of that writing will involve being able to write formal letters, or to write blog posts. It will be essays or thought pieces or articles. All of these are vital...
... and knowing how to choose the correct register is in no way going to kill their ability to write a story, either. Even when writing stories, we choose different registers. A tense thriller has one use of language, and a romantic story another. Being aware of this is vital.
7. I think the really big thing we all need to remember when trying to help our kids with stuff is what is missing when we are trawling through it with them: the (almost always brilliant) TEACHERS. However well we might be managing, we are not teachers, and we largely...
... (though not universally) lack the ability to make this stuff interesting. As a one-case-example that is by no means exhaustive, my son is so much happier when he has his teacher explaining and geeing him up on zoom and then does a piece of work than when it's just him and me.
Teachers are amazing people. They can and do make the most essential and potentially boring of stuff fascinating. They can make split digraphs and fronted adverbials JAW-DROPPING. And just because we can't do that, doesn't mean our kids should not be learning it.
So that's my tuppence worth! I love grammar, because I love to communicate, and I know for a fact that it is the bones and muscle of my writing; while the heart and soul is my creativity, however far that goes.
