A difficult report card is not a verdict; it is a clarion call
We got our daughter’s report card and it was, by objective standards, not a great one. She happens to be very savvy and geshikt, just not so academically minded. Should we address it with her, or should we shield her from it?
A difficult report card is not a verdict; it is a clarion call. It is a message to parents that something in their child’s school experience is not working, and may even be painful.
MY
short answer is: You should do both.
Let me explain.
Over the years, I’ve made a public offer that, to date, no one has managed to beat. I claim to possess the worst limudei kodesh report card ever issued. My parents lived in our childhood home for over forty years. About five years ago, they downsized, which required my mother to sort through decades of papers and memories. One day, an envelope arrived in my mailbox, a time capsule from my youth. Inside were artifacts from my childhood, including a beautiful footprint from my earliest days of life.
And then there was the document. My eighth-grade report card. It stopped me in my tracks. Three heis, two daleds, and a gimmel. In over 25 years in chinuch, I have never seen anything quite like it. Most students with such grades don’t remain in school long enough to receive a report card at all. And no self-respecting mechanech today would send something like that home. We’d sooner leave it blank or write “NG” (no grade) than record a string of heis.
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