It appears that in the autumn, the exams watchdog - the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority - is going to hold a debate with teachers, parents and other interested bodies, about what is the best way forward for the teaching of English.

They are, it seems, concerned how English teaching needs to adapt to the 21st century, because "the world changes rapidly".

They wish to debate whether basic reading and writing will still be seen as essential skills for children in 2015, because, they say, they are concerned how English teaching should respond to our "diversity in language, ethnicity, gender and personal needs".

Where have we heard that before, I wonder? In the jargon of the "educationalists" who have bedevilled our education system for the past 40 years, watering down everything that children really should know, dropping academic "school subjects" in favour of a fruitless pursuit of "social equality," ie vague waffle that leaves many of our children under-educated to the point of being illiterate and unemployable.

What I'd like to know is how a bunch of brainless ideologues, who don't believe in teaching children anything remotely useful got to be in charge of what will happen in education for years to come?

Has it not dawned on them that the acquisition of language is the very thing that marks us out from animals?

Being able to speak, read and write language has only a passing and superficial importance to our "ethnicity, gender and personal needs".

It is the purest and most tangible evidence of what goes on in our heads.

It puts in a form comprehensible to others the thoughts that buzz about in our brains and expresses essentially what it is to be human.

If children don't need to be able to read fluently: ie to tap into the accumulated wisdom of past ages, to understand the complex problems that confront, and have always confronted mankind, to look into the minds of the people who write books and thereby develop their own understanding of an ability to relate to the world, how are they going to grow intellectually and emotionally?

To add insult to injury, these crackpots are going to explore the possibility of introducing into the English curriculum a new qualification in creative writing, presumably to replace the learning of grammar, spelling and correct idiom.

It appears that they don't realise that a knowledge of how to construct meaningful language, by reading and learning, facilitates the reasoned and cogent expression of individual thought.

The whole project is not only crazy, but deeply frightening, because it sows the seeds of a Brave New World society, where thousands of stupid and uneducated clones are created to serve a society which already rewards inarticulate, four- letter- word strewn speech.

Television programmes, discussions in the media, plays, magazine articles, interviews with celebrities are now filled with execrable English and obscenities. I despair.