The new Children’s TV show where puppets show children how to read nonsense words and their teacher where the door is.
It’s just like an episode of ‘Sesame Street’ – only with an oral exam and a ‘pull your socks up’ conversation at the end of it.
Unlike ‘Sesame Street, ‘Zog and Vot’ want your children to read totally nonsense words not found in the Oxford English dictionary.
The sort of stuff that the plain-looking woman in ‘Dictionary Corner’ (interestingly, not in a ‘corner’ and therefore rubbishing its own definition) throws out on ‘Countdown’.
These totally fictitious words must be read by children in order to test their pronunciation of ‘Edward Lear’ type words. Words that have no real meaning in the real world and beyond the page upon which they have been indelibly set.
Of course, when one studies the words of Edward Lear one might see the device upon which he may have drawn his own nonsense gibberish.
Particularly when one reads ‘The Owl & The Pussycat’ and notes his invention of ‘The Bong Tree’.
‘O beautiful pussy…. Have a toke on this!’
The new ‘Gove Productions’ programme has been co-produced by one or two millionaire baby boomers within the british government whose main aim in life appears to be is to get our children to jump through as many hoops as possible for as little reward as possible.
See it as a way of preparing one’s child for employment within the ‘public sector’.
The overall aim of today’s compulsory tests in Primary Schools is to have every child reciting Shakespeare and Wordsworth long before they hit the wrought iron gates of Key Stage 3 & 4 or their fee paying (Mummy’s buying me a stallion for Christmas) public school education.
One can almost smell Wilshaw’s testosterone wafting its way down the school corridors on its way to the Staff Room.
‘Zog’
‘Vot’
‘Big Bird’
