Report Cards Come Home and End of Day

“Knows nothing cares less”.

“Grammar slides off of Adam like water off a duck”

“Adam is incapable of rational thought”.

- Zinger report comments from Mr. de P’s school days. 

When I look back on these ripostes, I am struck by how well written they are: the first a perfect parallel sentence, the second an arresting simile, and the third a strong declarative statement with no euphemism whatsoever. 

Yes, these are all true and there were many others like them, directed at me and also my friends. None of this was at all unusual, it was just routine reporting in Ontario during my youth. Now I will admit that the last of these dismayed my patient parents (especially my mother, a teacher) and even me, since the lack of any rational faculty was not conducive to academic success, and even worse could cut into the summer holidays. 

Where school misdemeanors were concerned the presumption was of guilt, not innocence, (the Justinian Code of Law--circa 550 AD--which assumed the latter and not the former, having not yet arrived in the Ontario of my boyhood). So there was nothing to do but take your lumps, and move on. 

I can assure you that this afternoon’s reports no such barbs and few of you even as parents will have imbibed such bracing tonic. 

So what do these report cards mean, and how should you interpret them?

A report card is a teaching tool as much as an evaluative one: 

“Growing Success” (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/GrowSuccess.pdf) the document that governs overall educational approach in Ontario has gotten at least this much right: the whole purpose of evaluation is to improve instruction; so the most important part of this is learning from what the teachers are telling you about your child, and looking towards greater mastery in the future. This is not self-evident as you would think. Most summative evaluation freezes things in time (“I only got a C”) and the actual learning stops. Please pay more attention to the comments than the Skills/Letters grades. 

Don’t take Report Cards literally:

These grades have been carefully considered, and earned, but they are only beacons along the way; when you read that a book was “#1 on the New York Times Best Seller List” it means it was a popular, and likely a good book, not that it is qualitatively better than the one that was # 2 or # 10.  Yet, again, we all too often read about a “B” or “C” student as if this somehow had the same objective status as a Low Pressure System or Pythagorean theorem.  It all comes back to a growth mindset. 

Good Students mostly always do well but poor ones often catch up:

This is mostly based on my own experience so take it for what it’s worth, but I have mostly found that students who enjoy elementary school and do well carry this into high school and beyond.  The reverse is not the case: I can count more students in my career who struggled mightily at several stages, including high school, and went on to quite wonderful careers in just about everything: business, medicine, the arts, science, public service. 

The experience of watching good students blossom later in their school careers is one of most rewarding parts of this job, and has been a constant over the years. 

So I hope you will rejoice in the mostly very good work done by your children, and join me in congratulating our teachers who put much care in crafting their comments.