Classic literature according to Twitter

Mar 29 2009 by Lorne Jackson, Sunday Mercury

EDUCATION used to be all about the three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic.

No longer.

Now maths has been mangled and mulched. And when it comes to writing, well, the writing is on the wall for that, too.

Even reading is not as robust a skill as once it was.

Now education chiefs are set to dump the study of the classics of literature and history.

It has been revealed that children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the Second World War under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum.

However, the draft plans will require children to master internet communication website Twitter.

The social networking site is massively popular. Even Stephen Fry and Barack Obama are all a-twitter over Twitter, which allows people to communicate in short, sharp sentences, using 140 characters or less.

The proposed curriculum, which will mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11, allowing schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

So are we set to turn into a nation of twitter twits?

It does seem very likely.