The problem lies back in the funnel. The end is the narrow segment leading to the exam, but during that progress we have lost sight of the whole joy and purpose of education. Knowledge, expanding our intellectual horizons, helps to make us full, rounded human beings able to explore both breadth and depth. Learning is a joy for its own sake. We were put here to learn. That charming cliché "life's rich tapestry" expresses a great truth. The more we know and understand, the more enriching our experience of that tapestry.

I cannot comment on the maths and science curriculum, but it is worrying that these rigorous subjects may also be watered down if only because engineers must rely on accurate mathematical calculations or innumerable things will collapse, killing us all. 

But although I am not a classicist I am delighted I was obliged to study Latin to A level. It seems strange that it has been banished from the timetable as "irrelevant" because if nothing else it is good mental exercise, a satisfying puzzle, and the popularity of brain exercises and sudoku surely indicates the desire to challenge the mind in an enjoyable yet rigorous way. Yet whereas most puzzles are like knots — untie them and you lose interest — classical languages lead to some of the greatest literature, magnificent civilisations, fascinating history and wise philosophy. If ever there was a great world to conquer metaphorically, it is the classical one. Bring that back and you challenge the young mind in the most exciting ways.

Bright young people who aim for academia know when they are being short-changed and they find it frustrating. I wish they would complain and loudly because it would have a far greater impact than when their elders do it for them. Of course, they do not know what they should learn nor should they choose their own curriculum, but the best of them know that when adults talk about not giving them knowledge which is not "relevant", they are being patronised. Just as teenage patois changes weekly, what is deemed relevant to themselves by one generation of pupils will be dismissed by the next. It is wrong to pretend that they know best and it does them no service. 

The debate continues about whether it is useful to learn things by rote. The young brain absorbs and what it absorbs remains for good. Not only times tables, chemical formulae and foreign language verbs are easily learned by heart, but whole long poems and pages of prose. After the age of 20, the ability to learn by heart and retain that learning decreases markedly. It pays to do it when it comes easily. But rote learning has its dangers and the ability to parrot answers does not necessarily imply any understanding of them, as my head full of chemical formulae testifies. This is an area where things have improved. But the pleasure of having a mental store of poetry is considerable and can see one through many a tedious journey in later life. Great verse is enriching, even ennobling, and if some of it seems useless to us when young, it may well become increasingly relevant as we age. To open up the treasure chest of great poetry going back many centuries to the young is to give a pearl without price and it need not be at the expense of the modern, though it should exclude the merely trendy. For my English Honours degree I had to study English literature from the Anglo-Saxons to 1880, but everything written thereafter was regarded as optional so it was possible to get a starred A without having read a word of it.