Every generation of schoolchildren needs a new set of wacko principles imposed on its education by the generation of middle-aged pedagogical wonks whose own education was screwed up by the wacko ideas of the previous lot; and who is to say that the middle-aged pedagogical wonks of tomorrow will not look back with a grateful and teary eye on the pedagogical wonks of today, who have (in Sir Jim Rose's interim report for the Schools Secretary) proposed the abolition of “subjects” altogether?

Subjects were always a bum idea, if you ask me. A bourgeois construct inclined to restrict rather than expand the opportunities for self-fulfilment. For example, I was stigmatised for my entire school career by the utterly misguided notion that I was “bad at maths”, a hastily applied and grossly inaccurate label that stuck with me quite unfairly from the age of 5 for very nearly ten years until I was, ooh, 18 or 19.

Had there, however, been no such thing as “maths”, so that I was merely “bad at that county thing we do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays before lunch and twice on Friday afternoon”, then I might have been OK. Although I grant it would be a bore for such mathematicians as John Horton Conway or Grigory Perelman to have to be introduced, at parties say, as the greatest “doer of that Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday county thing since Pythagoras”.

In recent years, it has been fashionable to scoff at Francis Fukuyama's announcement in 1992 of the “end of history”, pointing out that the fall of communism and the death of ideology has by no means spelt the end of material progress but merely moved the diodes around which historical forces polarise.

Now, however, we can clearly see that Fukuyama didn't mean history was over, per se, just that it was changing its name to Human Social and Environmental Understanding.

It is, however, the end of geography (it will also, confusingly, be called Human Social And Environmental Understanding) that will cause the greatest upset, for if there is no geography then what on earth will the PE master teach as his indoor subject? (I mean, come on, you can't teach Human Social and Environmental Understanding wearing a tracksuit, now can you?)

I was reasonably OK at English, and proud of it. It is, after all, the only meaningful thing to be good at. Being good at French or physics or history just meant you'd been listening to the teacher, but to be good at English - the language we all have to speak anyway - was like being “good at being a person” or “excellent at living”. Now it's going to be called Understanding English, Communication and Languages, which is, like, sooooo lame, you know what I'm saying? I mean, bruv, who wants to communicate, innit?

A huge change of personality will come over the curriculum: the muscular thickos who can climb a rope but barely read will now shine in Understanding Physical Health and WellBeing, which sounds every bit the intellectual equal of Scientific and Technological Understanding. And all the subjects for whacked-out druggies with dirty hair will be lumped together as Understanding Arts and Design - although many will no doubt be put off by its having four words, which is way more than they are capable of reading at a sitting.

Nor is the death of “subjects” the only great news. I was delighted to read that the new proposals will also “offer summer-born children the chance to start school earlier so as not to miss out on vital months of education which can disadvantage them later in life”.

And thank the Lord for it. I was born on July 29, 1969, and as a result missed almost everything, especially Anglo-Saxon shore forts. Don't ask me why, but when I arrived in form 5G in September 1978 everyone already knew about them. I was desperate to be filled in, but we were on to 1066 now, and that was it. To admit to not knowing about Anglo-Saxon shore forts would have been academic death.

But, by sod's law, in almost every class discussion of the Conqueror's invasion that term (and even, tangentially, in discussion of Tostig's incursion via the Humber and the Ouse), the key seemed to be Anglo-Saxon shore forts, of which my fellow pupils had not only drawn innumerable pictures, but which they had apparently visited on more than one history field trip, while I was down the hall in 4W, excelling precociously in potato painting and looking up rude words in the dictionary (oh, the laughs I got with “gaseous aftermath of an anal dilation”).

But of Anglo-Saxon shore forts I knew nothing. The pain of ignorance was horrendous and to this very day, when asked any especially difficult question (such as, what speed I thought I was driving at, which wine I would like with the turbot, and whether it's worth taking the M25 round to the M20 or best just sticking with the A2), my first instinct is to assume that the answer has something to do with Anglo-Saxon shore forts.

The problem for me was that, as a summer child, I was always either the youngest or the oldest in the class. I began my school career, at 5, as the youngest: endlessly failing, and cocking about in lessons to make up for it. So they wrote me off as “puerile” (harsh criticism to the ears of a five-year-old who didn't know he was not supposed to be a “puer” any more) and dropped me down a year, where I became, of course, the oldest in the class, and took the job very seriously, coming top in everything and having - by the meritocratic system then in place in our schools - to be promoted the following year to the smarter, older class, where, obviously, it was a shock no longer to be top, and where I resorted to compensatory arsing about once more, leading to relegation, and so on.

Essentially a normal child with abilities bang on average in a decent school, my unlucky birth date meant that I was cast anew, each year, as either a dunce or a genius (each categorisation as erroneous as the other), which had exactly the effect on my impressionable mind that you might expect: I was the destructive swot, the naughty prizewinner, the thicko with the English cup. Never in one class long enough to make friends, never quite sure if this new crowd was behind or ahead of me.

At 15, I got the best O levels of anyone in the slow stream (which were worse than anyone in the fast stream) and so applied to Oxford, which took me at 16 but insisted I took a year out to “grow up a bit”. So after school I went to work in Harrods as an elf in Santa's grotto. Just the thing.

And Sir Jim is right, one never quite catches up. To this very day, I consider myself a 39-year-old of pretty normal brightness and wit. Put me among 38-year-olds and I will shine like a beacon, but put me with 40-year-olds and I start pulling silly faces and weeing in corners.

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