The letter, published in the Daily Telegraph and the Independent on 19 March, warned that Mr Gove¡¯s plans ¨C which include pupils learning a language from the age of seven and mastering their multiplication times tables by the time they are nine ¨C would put pressure on teachers to rely on rote learning.

¡°The learner is largely ignored. Little account is taken of children¡¯s potential interests and capacities, or that young children need to relate abstract ideas to their experience, lives and activity,¡± it said.

But addressing a conference for headteachers in London yesterday, Mr Gove said the professors must think it a ¡°tragedy¡± that he would ¡°like children to learn things¡±.

¡°The impression is that it is Govey versus academia,¡± he said. ¡°But there is good academia and bad academia.¡±

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Mr Gove also antagonised education academics by saying he wanted to move away from universities determining how teacher training was delivered and detailed plans to commit more money to school-led instruction.

We used our to ask if there was any ¡°bad academia¡± on your agenda. The response was immediate.

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¡°I planned to work 1-to-1 with students on dissertations, but maybe I¡¯ll just have them take a multiple-choice test,¡± tweeted Courtney Hopf, a learning developer at Brunel University, while University of Exeter history professor Richard Toye said: ¡°I thought I might listen to some student presentations. How foolish, when I could be telling them what to think!¡±

Martin Eve, lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln, added: ¡°Right, off to do some #badacademia. Or, as it¡¯s occasionally known, critical thinking.¡±

And Victoria Dawson, a PhD student at De Montfort University¡¯s International Centre for Sports History and Culture suggested that Gove might prefer her to regurgitate ¡°what a middle aged bloke wrote 60 years ago¡± rather than undertaking some original research.

But as the replies came in, the Gove-supporting Twitter feed @toryeducation threatened to stoke the row further by mocking academics in a series of tweets.

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¡°A GREAT thing about imminent MOOC creative destruction: A LOAD OF RUBBISH ¡®SOCIAL SCIENCE¡¯ ACADEMICS WILL BE UNEMPLOYED!¡± read one message.

chris.parr@tsleducation.com