Why teaching nonsense makes sense

There is more than enough dumbing down in modern education without seeing it where it doesn’t exist. The new Ofsted report complaining that under-11s are being taught too much Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Spike Milligan is especially wrong-headed. For a start, it is impossible for anyone of any age to have too much Milligan: a meaningless phrase. Secondly, the report is leadenly illiterate in its approach to nonsense poetry: as Noel Malcolm explains in his excellent book on English nonsense, there is a rich strand in our nation’s literature that flows from a sense of the absurd and a crazy experimentalism with language. More to the point, this sort of verse captivates children: I recently introduced my six- and four-year-old sons to the Jabberwocky and Milligan’s poems and they adored it all, instantly, rocking with laughter. Indeed, I would say that Milligan, Lear and Carroll are precisely the sort of poets that can open a child’s mind to the potential of language, and associate poetry with fun and imagination rather than discipline and rote learning.