This week’s edition of You Couldn’t Make It Up comes from Cornwall, where children are being given swearing lessons.

“The object is to get pupils to look at their language and see if they know what they are saying. A lot of swearwords are homophobic, racist and offensive to women,” said teacher Phil Gibson.

Ah, ha. That explains it. Of course we should discourage children from gratuitous abuse. But an obsession with homophobia, racism and sexism has been elevated to a religion in many schools to the point where actually teaching pupils to read and write comes a distant second.

Richard Littlejohn, July 3