Mandatory Poetry Will Alter Curriculum

Things could be looking very different for British school children soon, thanks to the strong emphasis on language arts being put forward by education secretary, Michael Gove. In the near future, children as young as five will be learning and reciting poetry from memory. From the Guardian:

From Year 1, at the age of five, children will be read poems by their teacher as well as starting to learn simple poems by heart and practise recitals.
The programme of study for Year 2 will state that pupils should continue "to build up a repertoire of poems learnt by heart and recite some of these, with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear".
More generally the curriculum will place a much stronger emphasis on reading for pleasure with children from Year 1 "becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales".

English isn’t the only thing in Gove’s sights:

At the same time, Gove will put forward proposals to make learning a foreign language compulsory for pupils from the age of seven.
Under his plans, primary schools could offer lessons in Mandarin, Latin and Greek, as well as French, German and Spanish from September 2014.
Gove is said to be determined to make the teaching of English at primary school "far more rigorous" than it is at present.

The full piece is here.