Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 31, 2017

I see a law career in Calvin’s future if he can graduate from high school.

That’s hard to believe.

I remember being told that C meant “average.” Yet it was totally unacceptable to most parents.

So then, my C- meant I was less than acceptable to most parents?

This report card probably has all A+ except for one A, and Dad is angry that he didn’t get that last A+.

Give this man a position in the Trump communications office.

Naw, he is overqualified.

It’s just alternate facts,.

Back in the sixties when I was a kid, “Report Card Day” was always the last school day before the Christmas break, which was always December 22nd, my birthday. English was our second language. Report card day was not a good day. My parents tried to be understanding but anything less than an A was frowned a upon. Dad’s now trying to make up for having been lax then

We got report cards 4 times – one for each quarter, I don’t remember being handed all of those report cards. Sometimes, the school mailed them instead. No matter how we got them. our parents had to sign them before we turned them back in to the school. I still have my grade school report cards all the way from Kindergarten to 8th grade. My high school ones were on really thin paper, a different report card for each class and those all faded so you can’t read them anymore. Parents didn’t sign the high school report cards and we didn’t turn them back in after our parents got them (usually in the mail). We just got a new report card each quarter.

Calvin might one day be a fine hostage negotiator.

Calvin has a very bright future in law or politics, or (shudder) both!

No, Dad wasn’t lying, Calvin. YOU were by stating that you WERE doing your best, when you obviously weren’t.

At the parochial grade school I went to the was a section for “effort” as well as “conduct”. I would get A’s & B’s on the courses and C’s on effort. That grade upset my dad because “imagine what grades would be if you actually tried.” We won’t go into my normal grade on “conduct”…That is a whole nother story…or several of them.

Back in the 1940’s, kids read and collected comics as an eagerly pursued and beloved habit. Most of them were early edition numbers which were published in that time frame. We also ‘collected’ report cards every 6 weeks, like it or not.

Guess which ones my mother kept when she cleaned out her attic 20 years later. :)

In grade school we could receive an H, S or L (high, satisfactory, low) in effort and the same thing in achievement. About the worst trouble I got in was the time I got an H in achievement and an L in effort. The maternal unit did not approve. ;-((( Luckily (for me) she did not tell the Supreme Court, the head master hisself. He would have approved even less (altho they both admitted years later they thought it was hilarious).

I get grounded for anything less than a 90%

Calvin’s dad should have known better than to tell Calvin “As long as you try your hardest.” Rookie mistake.

Calvin has a future at MSNBC or CNN or any of the other lefty news nerd networks.

My son once brought home a Report Card with an F in Math. He was in the 5th grade.

We had an intense discussion about the need to Improve the Grade.

The next Report Card had an A in Math. I said “You’ve screwed up.” He looked at me in disbelief and said “But I got an A”. I said "Well, if you had got another F I might have thought that you just couldn’t understand Math, but now that you proved that you’re capable of an “A” I expect you to at least get a Passing grade."

He never failed another class in school, including college.

Alas, this would not happen today. My sister-in-law is a 1st grade teacher. She’s not allowed to use red ink to correct anything because it intimidates the children. She has to be very careful about writing comments because nothing negative can be put on the record. So she can’t say, “Johnny needs to pay more attention in class” because it is critical of the child. I don’t know how you can give meaningful feedback in a system like that.

.

No child is left behind (or left back as we used to say in my day). They all get passed on so they become the next teacher’s problem.

Sometimes I think parents overreact when they see their kid’s Report Cards. Kids are still learning! Calvin is only 6.

If I were a parent, I would say to them “Maybe you could try a little harder?” or “Never mind. I’m sure you tried your best”

I wouldn’t yell at them like some idiotic parents do.

xxx

He failed just to prove his point.

Everyone has their best, Dad. That’s unfair

THIS is an A, B, C, B-, F