You're Right, Suzanne!

   In a March 14 article in the Toronto Daily Star, Ryerson professor of journalism, Suzanne Kelman, is one of those interviewed concerning the cohort's passage through the universities and colleges. She talks about being asked by one parent to take her son's temperature, because she was worried that he was sick. She talks too about the shock that so many of the students experience when they begin their first year. It's the shock of meeting reality head-on and it has nothing to do with their being younger. It comes when they start receiving their marks for papers and tests. Says Kelman, "The schools around Toronto or Ontario have wildly inflated their marks." Exactly, Professor Kelman.
   I've been there. I've seen it done over and over and over again. I've fought against it and found myself damn near drowned in the flood of protest and complaint that follows hard on the heels of some kid and/or their parents being asked to acknowledge the shoddy results of their lacklustre academic efforts.
   Again, to quote Kelman, "You want an example?" In my last year of teaching, there was an individual in the classroom who was far more concerned with tyrannizing their classmates and stealing things from anyone who had an item they wanted than they were with doing anything even vaguely resembling school work. Time came for report cards and I began averaging marks and recording the achievements of the students. I recorded this student's achievement as well, which meant that after being as generous as I possibly give, they still had an average of less than twenty in several subject areas. When the principal saw the report, the shit hit the fan. "They have to apply to a high school," I was told. "Give them a passing mark."
   It didn't seem to matter that in some areas I had seen not one completed assignment all term. In some, I had not even seen one that was started, let alone finished. I had struggled with this individual all term, trying to control their incredibly disruptive influence in the classroom. That was all they had spent their time on, as far as I could discern. There was rarely any time given to academics, and yet I was supposed to give them a passing mark. I refused to do it. I refused to fabricate marks. I refused to put my name to a lie.
    Other staff members advised me to give the marks. They said that if the student had done anything at all, and the work was "sort of coherent" I should give the pass based on that. "Why make problems for yourself?" I was asked. Too many of my colleagues marked their students on exactly those criteria - "sort of" and the "no problem" easy way out. It certainly makes them look like good teachers, when all the kids in their classes are getting top marks. The problem with that is that sooner or later, reality is going to come crashing down on somebody's head. It's usually the teachers of the older grades and the students themselves left to face the reality check when it arrives.
   You're right, Suzanne. The schools are "wildly" inflating their marks. You have to wonder how we're ever going to manage to get those involved to face reality. Parents who don't have the time, or are unwilling to impose rules find it wonderfully easy to have a son or daughter who does no homework and still aces schoolwork. What status to have a genius in the family!Teachers who are more interested in "not making problems" can be best buddies with their classes and just pass on the mess to the first one the kids encounter who has moral standards. It's all so nice and easy. I don't know how it's going to be fixed, Suzanne, but until that one is figured out, you and your colleagues will have to continue doing things like instituting mandatory grammar exams.
   A grammar exam to get into second-year journalism? That's only one of the payments we'll all be forced to make before our schools, and society itself gets back in touch with reality.