Stupidly, Mr Gove’s department dicked around with the curriculum in an effort to justify its own existence.
Just repeating what has already been said here but, hopefully, preserving it longer than it ordinarily might be.
This is Biff.
This is Chip.
This is Biff and Chip’s homework.
Biff and Chip are required to write down ten examples of fronted adverbials.
Biff and Chip have not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is.
This is Mum.
Mum has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.
“We don’t know what a fronted adverbial is,” whinge Biff and Chip. “This homework is impossible. You will have to help us.”
“It’s not my homework, it’s your homework,” says Mum, thanking her lucky stars that she did not have to engage in any of this fronted adverbial bollocks when she was at school.
This is Dad.
Dad still struggles to distinguish between a noun and a verb, and would not know a fronted adverbial if one came up and punched him in the face.
Biff and Chip think for a moment about asking Dad for help.
They decide to Google instead.
This is Mrs May.
When Mrs May went into teaching she honestly believed she would be able to spend her time helping children to love learning. And putting on plays. Mrs May loves a play. She did not realise that a love of learning would not feature on the National Curriculum at all, and that she would instead be forced to meet a series of impossible and continuously moving goalposts which successive governments would put in place, and have to teach her classes about ridiculous concepts such as fronted adverbials which, in all honesty, are only ever likely to be of use if they end up becoming professors of linguistics. Or primary school teachers.
If truth be told, Mrs May has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.
This is Floppy the dog.
Floppy holds no truck with fronted adverbials.
Floppy eats the fronted adverbial homework sheet.
Floppy knows that he is a fucking liability, and waits to be told so.
No one is more surprised than Floppy when the entire family gather around and tell him “Oh GOOD dog Floppy.”
Floppy feels this is proof positive that some good can come from fronted adverbials after all.
Later at school, Biff and Chip are, for the first time, able to legitimately use the excuse: “My dog ate my homework.”
Mrs May breathes a secret sigh of relief that that is one less set of incomprehensible and entirely incorrect homework that she has to plough through, and suggests to the class that they will all put on a play instead to celebrate.
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