The report belongs to the dark ages, 1947, when I was 12
years and 4 months old. What’s interesting are the enormous discrepancies
between how I performed during the term and in the end-of-term exam and the apparent
unwillingness of the teachers to explain or even acknowledge the difference.
Take French. My term performance was rated 23rd
(out of a class of 26), whereas I was second in the exam. The teacher says: “His
oral work is weak as he does not try to do well.”
Physics reveals the teacher’s genteel priorities. Term 25,
exam second; “He is interested in his work but untidy written work has resulted
in a low term order.” I wonder what Einstein’s penmanship was like.
Note the grudging admission for Maths (Term 20, exam first).
“He tries and has made some progress.”
Only in Divinity (these days Religious Studies) is the
discrepancy addressed but in a way that confirms what most foreigners
(especially in the US) think of British slyness. Term 20, exam 4. “Very fair.”
And with applause comes the slap on the head: English; term
first, exam 4; “Good work; quick and keen in class, but written work too often
spoiled by untidiness.”
To tell the truth I’m surprised by the exam results. That
isn’t how I remember school which was dominated by continuous physical
punishment, sarcasm, and teacher/student incompatibility. Nor, I think, is it
typical of the school. Throughout, I remained among the low performers; those
with talent were treated better.
Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.
Interesting how much better you did in the exams. Do you usually thrive under pressure?
ReplyDeleteColette: It's not so much I did better in exams, but that I was so terrible during the term. It set me wondering. Perhaps the exams were set and marked by teachers other than those who taught me during the term.
DeleteIf my term teachers actually set the exams they could hardly have averted their eyes from these wide differences in competence.
Pressure? It's a possibility. One of the features of being a reporter was being able to write to very tight deadlines, often expressed in minutes. Just before I left the newspaper to join a magazine in London I was covering a sordid court case about child abuse. The opposition reporter said it was too squalid to report. As a result I rushed back to the office and dictated a quite lengthy piece over the phone directly from my shorthand notes (ie, I didn't physically write it on to my typewriter first, as was usual). My report was in time to catch the very much tighter deadlines for the daily (evening) newspaper - the only time I ever had what we called "a page one lead". What strikes me now is the coolness with which I did this.
My most memorable school report quote: 'A neat nuisance'. I upset the metalwork teacher.
ReplyDeleteTom: On the report card I have shown there is an overall summary of my work by my form (ie, class) teacher. It bears even less relationship to reality: "He has had a good term (sic!) and should maintain the lively interest which he has shown."
DeleteYou make me wish I had my old report cards from elementary school to high school. I seem to recall they were similar to this, that I did well on exams, but my in-class performance left something to be desired. Some teachers were just so boring.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: I just didn't get the hang of school: sitting on a seat while an adult babbled at me. The process of being taught seemed beyond me.
DeleteWhich is strange because as I got older I became a willing student. This started in RAF national service when, for eight months, I was subjected to a really hard subject - electronics, from the structure of the atom to a detailed familiarity with various complex items of radio equipment. A total of 25 exams where failure in any one caused one to be "dropped back" for several weeks. For some reason this subject really gripped me and subsequently opened up new possibilities in journalism.
Later still I decided to take (and pay for) face-to-face tuition in French which I maintained for decades.
Even later, aged eighty, I decided to take (and pay for) face-to-face tuition in classical singing which is still ongoing, albeit now by Skype.
I don't like that Educators stifle Children's inherent Brilliance and try to make everyone fit into this tidy Box. Some of the worst rated Students have gone on to do Great things in spite of not being treated well or fairly in School. Some of the best Teachers I remember fondly encouraged us all and found ways to connect to every Student and help each to Succeed and feel valued.
ReplyDeleteBohemian: In my case there was no brilliance to stifle. At least, that was my impression of school. Re-reading this report I notice the date and thus arrived at my age at the time. A year before my father had asked me (aged 11) what I wanted to do with my life and I'd replied "be a reporter". It became clear I would never make university and he asked me the same question when I was fifteen and I gave him the same answer. Via his influence I became a tea-boy on the local newspaper and went on to edit a magazine in the USA and then other magazines back in London.
DeleteThus, I couldn't wait to get away from school and for 44½ years I had the job I'd always wanted. I was very lucky.
My reports would seem to mirror yours RR. Many of the teachers at my grammar school were middle aged/old and many were no doubt serving out their working lives with no real interest in individual pupils - unless they were brilliant. These seemed to be given the master's attention to the exception of the steady drudgers (me amongst them). Some were actually vile and would be taken to court today for their physical abuse (one would hit a boy so hard and continuously that he fell to the floor and then would been "stirred" with a forceful shoe).
ReplyDeleteThe best master really cared, a teacher of German, who made lessons interesting and brought his German folk music records in for us to listen to. He took an annual group of pupils to Germany for an extended exchange visit. He could be humorous and knew us all by name and background. Kenneth Sawdy, I record his name because he cared too much and eventually committed suicide (hosepipe over car exhaust) leaving a note to say that he felt he was letting us all down and was a failure. A lovely man, may he rest in peace.
"What Horace says is, Eheu fugaces.
Postume, Postume.
Years fly away and are lost to me lost to me"
I thank God where my school days are concerned!
Avus: I'm not sure about the mirroring. The part of my education that has endured started the moment I stepped into the reporters' room at The Telegraph and Argus, Bradford, and was further sustained by a growing familiarity with members of the sub-editors' room.
DeleteI shared a cameraderie with even the crassest, drunkest, most misogynous journalist (and there were several) on that newspaper. Language, not as a theory but in its practical application, aiming for clarity, conciseness and vividness. And not merely language in its formulaic employment in newspapers, but as a key to understanding Ulysses, as an informing influence when I try to write novels or do blog-posts, and even - who would ever have thought it? - when I perhaps over-reach myself and embark on a sonnet.
I was among men (and a few women) whose daily concern was the use of words to inform and how best to do this. And they never stopped talking about it. A world of difference between an arid classroom where some middle-aged dullard perpetuated the child/adult chasm and a smoky room where the subject was ever on the wing. Of course on the newspaper the subject was undirected. You could take it or leave it, except that you left it at your peril. Because language also explained things like how local institutions worked, what politicians were up to, and - from the courts - the horror of society when it breaks down.
The best compliment anyone ever paid me was to introduce me as an "auto-didact". It wasn't strictly true because it hints at burning midnight oil. What I did was search out people with this common interest and to some extent suck them dry. While allowing them to do the same. A benign form of self-interest, I hope.
These reports are just snapshots and maybe also a little bit revenge notes by frustrated teachers.
ReplyDeleteMy worst subject in school - always - was English. I was told from about age 10 that I had absolutely no talent for any modern foreign language.
Sabine: I'm sad to reveal that I did rather well in German (6 term, 3 exam) but the proof is in the eating: that early promise has I fear gone down the plughole. And at a time when I really would appreciate better German, given that most of the songs I have learnt in retirement are in that language.
DeleteI think the concept of revenge is slightly fanciful. My elder daughter has taught physics and I asked her what the discrepancy (ie, term scores vs. exam scores) represents. "A very lazy student," she said dismissively, and I fear I must agree with her. I was not only lazy, I deliberately put myself outside the learning process. Even so, this does not explain why I did quite well with exams.
That's too easy. I have been married to a 3rd/2nd level science teacher for seemingly ever and have spent too many years studying psychology and pedagogy to accept the term "lazy" per se. Have a listen to one of the talks of the late Sir Ken Robinso I posted recently: https://interimarrangements.blogspot.com/2020/09/swinging-on-star.html
DeleteI have been called overly romantic/idealistic but I have also visited so-called model schools eps. in Denmark where teachers shake their heads at the concept of a student being lazy, their reply would be, no child is born lazy, no pupil is lazy, but many pupils are disinterested or bored or feel out of place, so instead, what's wrong with the teacher?
If you follow Sir Ken's thinking, namely that schools as we know it were developed to supply workers for the industrial age, you start to question many aspects of what goes on as education.
Sabine: I wasn't trying to promulgate my daughter's view. Since there was no correspondence between the comments teachers made on my report card and the glaring elephant-in-the-room discrepancies between my measured performances in various subjects, I merely wondered whether there was a tendency among teachers to react in any specific way to these combined assessments. As far as I'm concerned "lazy student" is neither right not wrong; if my daughter's reaction was typical of other teachers' views so be it.
ReplyDeleteSchool, and in particular, the process of being taught as a group (other than at ski-school) simply passed me by. I was asked by my father at age 11 what I wanted to do in my life and answered "become a reporter". Although I can't be sure I think I'd held this opinion for some time. School seemed irrelevant to this ambition and I was merely waiting out my time. Later, as I say in another re-comment, a major exception to my antipathy to being taught in a group occurred during national service when the RAF forced me to understand electronics. It worked. Beyond that if I've ever wanted to learn something I've paid for solo instruction.
Psychologically I may not have been lazy at school but my outward appearance and behaviour might well have given that impression. I watched the Sir Ken Robinson clip and it seemed to make sense. However education - as a generality - has never gripped me. Indefensible no doubt, especially since I am a parent, but I simply cannot manufacture interest in this formal process.