There's a column by Simon Armitage here headed 'Poetry should be subversive'. I started reading the piece thinking 'No, it shouldn't', because I don't believe there's anything (in the way of political direction or character) that poetry should be, or for that matter literature more generally. Anyway, not only does Simon Armitage not say what he is billed as saying, he doesn't say anything remotely resembling it. All he says is that when he was young he 'found refuge in poetry, and thought of it as an alternative to the mainstream'; and that he thinks children should be 'allowed to find the poems that fit their voices or appeal to their imaginations'. This seems an eminently sensible suggestion, but isn't the same as favouring poetry which is subversive.
There is, however, an interesting question raised by Armitage's column by the way. This is the question of how much young children should be subjected to disciplines of learning - whether as in reciting and memorizing poems, having to learn grammar, syntax, spellings, or tables and rules of arithmetic, foreign languages, and so on. Standardly, when this topic arises, two kinds of childhood experience are reported. In one of them, the teller of the story will say how she developed a lifelong hatred of whatever it is - Shakespeare, poetry, maths (even cricket, begorrah) - through having had to endure it, been on the receiving end of regimented learning. The other reported experience is just the opposite: from people who will tell you they love Shakespeare, poetry, maths or whatever, and that the origins of this love lie in childhood, whether in school or out of it, in having been introduced willy-nilly to certain subjects and given the rudiments of them.
Anecdotal evidence, therefore, by itself resolves nothing. Disciplines of learning can either repel or attract, and this will depend on many circumstances. I will hazard just one thing, and this without benefit of any familiarity with educational research or theory: some disciplines of learning do have to be imparted, because the very idea of real learning as pure spontaneity or pure fun is illusory. Children, and indeed adults, need to acquire from somewhere the experience that attaining command of a subject has its difficulties, however interesting that subject may also be, and (for each person) in the best of cases is. Everything depends on the method and the spirit with which such educational disciplines are taught. Armitage's 'allowed to find the poems that fit their voices or appeal to their imaginations' is a good model, but of course in practice it is knowing just how to combine externally guiding structures with scope for individual imagination and choice that is the true wisdom in this domain.