To find some Primary School teaching a bit pointless?

[Schooll]

Every other day my child brings home homework asking her to identify a new type of pronoun, adjective etc.

My friend is over today too and we both work in fields that require a good standard of English. We cannot understand why we are still stressing children out with things like ‘identify the relative pronoun’, what use is this information?

Genuinely, when will my child ever need to know this and why is she spending so much time stressing over the different types when it’s unlikely to ever be needed again, unless she becomes a primary school teacher?

Am I missing something where this sort of information is actually really useful and we should still be using it to judge children’s intelligence in exams etc?

Life skills are our job as parents.

Celestia 😂 Seriously?
Just in case this is in earnest ‐life skills such as how to make toast are definitely ones to be taught at home. What is parenting if not this?

I teach sewing across the primary age range to whole classes. Believe me, what I accomplish with 30 9-year olds in 40 minutes you can do in 5 at home, and so much better. Ditto most practical things.

I hope this changes before my DS has to learn this because I think I would struggle, never mind him.
My older teenagers never had to learn this stuff and seem to have turned out okay. Gove is a complete twat and I bet even teachers can't see the point of having to teach this.

It’s been nearly ten years since Gove implemented this curriculum. If it’s been working so fabulously well, I presume there are now lots of secondary teachers and university lecturers who are being dazzled on a daily basis by the literacy skills of these children?!

I agree with most of what you say, though I do think that some need more than very basic maths. Also phonics does seem to work when they're learning to read - two of my children did phonics and two didn't, the latter took much longer to learn. Perhaps this doesn't work for all children, but my GS is almost reading now without any stress after starting school in September.
DD and I were talking about this the other day after yet another ridiculously long grammar homework session. It seems that in many people's opinion (including teachers) it is completely unnecessary. If they need more grammar later because they're studying Latin or whatever they can do it then.
I'm in my 70's and remember learning basic grammar, it's been enough for me and I'm educated to masters standard. There are so many more important things for them to be learning.

It’s basic grammar and the fundamentals of the English language. It would be a shame if good grades at GCSE English Language could only be achieved by children attending elite private schools wouldn’t it?

The average reading comprehension age of UK adults is 9 years. I don't like Gove but the state schooling current adults were brought up in wasn't successful enough and we do need to raise standards. Grammar also opens doors to other skills too, such as foreign language learning. I see so many adults who claim they are not competent language learners, but the actual problem is they don't know what a modal verb is or a subordinating clause, meaning they can't access textbooks or grammar books, or choose the correct word from a bilingual dictionary or they have to work longer and harder to understand a concept because they can't recognise it in English.

When it comes to learning foreign languages - other countries dont teach so much grammar because they love it but because it's necessary to speak correctly. Similarly as in English, it takes so long to read and write - it's much much easier to read German.

I teach in HE and no, our students' essays havent improved. In reality, they all just use chatgpt now which has kind of made this issue somewhat redundant.

As a primary school teacher, I completely agree!

Blame the government! It's all just total bollocks, and I certainly never learnt it at school! We did nouns, verbs and adjectives, that's it! But that being said, I feel like punctuation and spelling were more of a focus back then than they are now.

I worked in education and the amount of teaching staff who would weep when a new initiative was unveiled, was mega. I still have no clue as to what a fronted adverbial is and I’m 66.

Glad to see someone sticking up for algebra!

I used simple algebra twice last week. Once to figure out is a piece of furniture I didn't have all the measurements for would fit in my daughter's room (song with a bit of Phythagous) and again at work to figure out how to budget the VAT costs. Algebra is a life skill, and not knowing it means you lack a very useful tool to solve all sorts of problems life will throw at you without having to resort to trial and error!

I'm an algebra fan.

I am not however a grammar fan, and I say that as someone who has learned several languages over my life!

The problem with algebra and too much maths is real day to day application isn’t used enough when teaching it so people don’t actually realise how much they do use it. My dad was a nurse for 30 years but is still adamant he never used algebra even when it is explained about medication dosages etc.

I think if real world application was used more people would find it a lot less daunting.

I found grammar to be really useful when I learnt other languages…

This is spot on!! It's true of a lot of mathematics really, people think they don't use them because they don't see how they're applying them.

Genuine question - if the average comprehension age of UK adults is 9, would understanding what a modal verb or subordinate clause is really change that?

As I say, genuinely curious - I would've thought the focus on grammatical terms beyond the basic is more likely to switch people (children) off to reading and writing, rather than encourage it (when reading widely is a leading factor in comprehension success as it builds vocabulary - ask any KS2 teacher how many times their pupils have been caught out by not knowing what a word means in the SATs reading paper!).

It's not just noun adjective and verbs. I as an adult learnt about phonemes, split diagraphs and triagraphs when mybson started reception. He is now year 4 and had to write poem last week containing things I had to look up. I feel its over complicated for kids

This is a common misconception, shared by many teachers as well as others. If only it were that simple. Research actually shows that understanding concepts in the abstract is more important, otherwise learning becomes context dependent. That doesn't mean children shouldn't be exposed to applications of knowledge.

Grammar is taught everywhere. It is the basis of the language and super important when you learn other languages. Including coding that is another language. Once kids are taught the elements of language and the logic behind the sentence construct and they intently get it they can quickly learn another language and also learning how to code in any coding language, c, Phyton matlab will be way easier.
it is sad how many teachers here do not see that. And actually very worrying.

It's not that teachers don't see the value of grammar. It's their professional experience of a very confusing and ill-thought out KS2 curriculum, including some rather peculiar emphases on quite idiosyncratic and arbitrary grammar rules. If you asked a selection of language experts, writers and educational experts, they wouldn't come up with this curriculum. Indeed they have been asked about the English curriculum in general:

writing4pleasure.com/2022/05/27/response-to-ofsteds-research-and-analysis-curriculum-research-review-series-english/

englishassociation.ac.uk/response-to-the-publication-of-ofsteds-curriculum-research-review-series-english/

www.nate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Teaching-sequence-for-writing.pdf

The trouble is, they're just taught to feature spot- not why it matters. I teach A level language, so students have to learn it. They all did it in primary, but can't remember any of it- or try to fit it into boxes, whereas words can behave in different ways, depending on where the word comes in the sentence.

Students lower down the school cannot get their verb tenses right. They sprinkle commas round like hundreds and thousands. They refuse to use capital letters. They don't have the attention span to read novels. I want students coming to secondary who actually have an imagination and a knowledge of stories and who are able to think for themselves. I would also like them to be able to use punctuation accurately.

I'm the age where no one was taught grammar and doing an A level in a foreign language blew my mind, but we did read.

That was more of a side fact especially aimed at those who think we can just read and absorb knowledge through osmosis, given that some of the pps think our children can do this with grammar. But yes, we should want better for our children's futures than an average reading age of a year 5 child.
I don't see why children can't read to enhance their vocabulary as well as learn grammatical terms. Lots of things switch children off reading. My dd personally loves grammar lessons and finds it very interesting. She hates phonics with a passion and it's a struggle to get her to stay in the classroom let alone drill flashcards.

It’s useful if you ever learn a foreign language. But 🤷🏻‍♀️

Understanding the components - or building blocks - of your language is extremely useful for learning other languages. I am sure this also applies to EAL children getting to grips with English as a new language. If you read Trip Advisor reviews or social media posts, you see so many people using appalling grammar; and I think this is partly because they were never taught it discretely. How can you appreciate that 'I know' is not 'I no' if you do not understand the word classes? And how can you teach children that you need a comma after a fronted adverbial, if they do not know what one looks like? Same applies to subordinate clauses etc...

4? My son just turned 6 and he's learning about these now. He's not behind his peers btw I've volunteered doing reading at the school so I know he's average/a little above average.
"Split digraphs" used to be known as the magic e. It's literally just a name change, personally I don't think there's a problem with learning the proper word for something.
This thread is making a mountain out of an absolute molehill.

I'm fully prepared to be told my grammar is horrendous so I have no room to talk though 😂

100% this.

It shames me to admit I had forgotten even the basics IE verbs and adverbs so when I started using Duolingo to learn German I was absolutely baffled reading the tips and seeing all those words being used 😂😭