Kids these days....

[conuly]

When I was a kid, if I got a bad report card, I went ahead and destroyed it beyond recognition! Ripped it up and buried it in the compost, tossed it down the toilet, whatever!

I certainly did NOT leave it on the stairs of the train for any passing do-gooder to pick up and carefully return to my school :)

Listen, if you can't be bothered to throw your failing report card out (and it was pretty bad), guess what? I certainly can be bothered to go 20 minutes out of my way to bring back! I'm under no illusions that it'll actually make it home to her Parents or Guardians this time (unless the school smartens up and calls them first), but maybe she'll dispose of it properly.

Honestly!

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Don't parents/guardians have to sign report cards so the school can be sure they've seen them in your place?
Granted, a kid might still destroy (or "loose") a report card to postpone the inevitable, but that's all it'd be... a postponement.

[conuly]

Yes, but the schools rarely follow up with it if you don't bring them back.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Wow. Lucky kids! Over here, you'd get a second chance to bring it back and if that doesn't happen, there goes a letter in the mail and a phone call...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Because what would be the point? Parents who care what grades their children are getting will certainly notice if no report card comes home, and will call the teacher to check on whatever story their kid tries to tell them about it.

Parents who don't care, don't care, and cannot be made to care by making them sign. Older children of such parents don't throw their report cards away; they simply forge the required signature.

The whole practice of 'grading' has been proven over half a century to be inimical to childrens' learning. I say it's another shining example of what John Taylor Gatto was talking about, and ought not to be supported in any way. But why assume that a report card found on the steps was deliberately abandoned, even if it was a bad one? As you noted, that's not a very likely place; perhaps it just slipped out of a notebook or something.

I never got what 'bad kids' call bad grades, but my parents expected all A's and B's, so a C was Cause for Concern, D was Doom and Disgrace, F was Flee to the Far Frozen North and be Forgotten Forever because that would be preferable to bringing home such a report card. Going home without one would only have caused even more trouble.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

That last paragraph sounds so familiar.
Although actually the "trouble" would have been - or, for my brother, occasionally was - limited to a stern question as to how this happened, and then extra study time or tutoring for the next couple of weeks/months - nothing nearly as bad as some kids have to fear. But when we were young, that certainly was a damn amount of trouble for us...

[conuly]

Because this time of year, just about all paperwork and notebooks are securely in your backpack as you get off the train. It's too cold and wet to worry about carrying them in arms.

Plus, as said, the grades were really very bad. At any rate, if it was an accident then this was an indisputably good deed!