The idiot’s guide to decoding report card comments

Posted by rajajang

January 31, 2008

jawaan “He is learning to adopt good working habits.” Ali’s parents were very pleased with that comment on his report card. In fact, they were so pleased they showered praise on Ali — what a good little boy he was. They bought him a gift of his choice (he chose a gadget that cost as much as a space rocket). They shared the comment with friends and family. They quoted it at weddings and funerals. Then one insider told them the truth.

“It actually means he doesn’t have good habits yet, and is still in the learning process.”

Ali’s parents stopped sharing that comment, and locked away Ali’s gift for when he would really earn it. They read and re-read the comment, looking at it alternately from the good and bad angle. They didn’t know whether to be pleased with the teacher for praising their child, or to be upset with her for giving him a thumbs-down. “Why couldn’t she just give it to us straight?”

But that’s the predicament of some teachers who have to face ‘difficult parents’. They can’t tell it like it is. It’s tricky business for them. They have to give the true picture, or these parents could blame them for keeping them in the dark, and not informing them of the child’s problems in due time, and consequently compounding them, and so being the sole cause of them. But they cannot say anything negative about the child either, for hell hath no fury like a difficult parent whose child has been scorned. Devil or the deep blue sea? Which one to choose? Neither. They choose to say the truth, but like a diplomat. That way they don’t have to deal with aggressive/defensive parents, or the principal’s concern that they have an unpopular teacher on hand, or the staff’s pitying/condescending looks when they are being lynched by parents who feel they haven’t got back their money’s worth putting their child in that school because the teacher hasn’t produced a ‘wonder kid’.

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