writing is improved - if a little robotic

Mr C responds creatively and imaginatively to a variety of texts and a range of stimuli. He writes showing reasonable development with basic accuracy. Mr C has the potential to do well in this subject but he must learn to make sensible, relevant contributions to class discussion. Mr C must improve his standard of presentation. Mr C hates, with a passion normally reserved for avocado based salads, this new system for writing end of year school reports.

Any of you who are teachers will know the joy that is writing annual reports for a few thousand pupils. The numbing effect it has on your brain, the ebbing of your will to breathe, and the inevitable repetitive strain injuries are surely some of the reasons we became teachers in the first place. Those of you who aren’t teachers will undoubtedly remember reports written about you. Pride, shame, amusement, despair, anger… They, love them or not, affected a little bit of who you were to become.

“The stick and carrot must be very much in evidence before this particular donkey decides to exert itself.”

"When the workers of the world unite it would be presumptuous of Dewhurst to include himself among their number."

“The improvement in his handwriting has revealed his inability to spell.”

I have been teaching long enough to (just) predate the influence of digital technology on reports. At the end of my first year a huge book was sent around the staff for each class. The reports were hand written and every mistake, no matter how tiny, became catastrophes. If you made one you had to reject the whole sheet for that pupil and all the teachers would have to rewrite their comments. The trick was either to be the first to comment (thus fewer teachers would be affected by any incompetence on your part) or to invest in an erasable ink pen. I did neither. I wasn’t liked that year.

“He has given me a new definition of stoicism: he grins and I bear it.”

“This boy does not need a Scripture teacher. He needs a missionary.”

“Would be lazy but for absence.”

Of course all of this was no longer a problem with the introduction of computers and such. Mistakes could be corrected easily and the copy and paste functions were a Godsend.

But, perhaps like so many aspects of the modern world, it’s all gone too far now. The system we use in this school now simply requires us to select five sentences from a preformed comment bank. We don’t write comments – we click buttons.

“He has an overdeveloped unawareness.”

“At least his education hasn’t gone to his head.”

“Your son sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.”

And I can’t help but feel we’ve lost something special in the process. The quotes I’ve included here are genuine comments sent in to the letters page of the Daily Telegraph. They may seem harsh – but then I only close the ones I thought would raise a smile. Sure they show a concerning level of derision and sarcasm – but they also show individualism, and wit. We can no longer show our individualism it seems – we can no longer possess wit. But it’s not just that.
Gone is the ability to qualify statements with personal disclaimers; gone is the ability to encode hidden meanings and the art of the backhanded compliment. Maybe that’s the whole point of this new system – maybe by controlling what comments can be used we remove all risk of ‘misunderstandings.’

But it’s all so robotic and impersonal. Will parents/pupils really find “________ lacks confidence when speaking but can listen actively and respond with understanding. _______ can read numerous types of texts, including fiction, non fiction and media with a high level of understanding, attempting to use evidence, and he writes confidently in a range of forms that suit different audiences with good levels of accuracy. If he is to improve he must show a more positive attitude to his work” more useful than a couple of sentences written specifically for that pupil with some personal points for improvement? Somehow I doubt it.

ambition vrs apathy

Its sad I know, but I live in a part of the world where, for a large part of the population, ambition and a desire to succeed is viewed with suspicion and derision.

I just had a young man come to me looking for extra revision materials for his GCSEs. Nothing untoward about that. I actually had a booklet of such material made up already for a girl the year below him. What struck me was the manner in which he asked for it.

I was in my classroom catching up on some marking after school. A shadow passed my door – then paused – then passed again. Eventually a face peered in, looked in each corner of the room, as if checking that it was completely empty. Quietly he opened the door and backed into the room checking the corridor as he went, and closed the door behind him before approaching the desk in a decidedly embarrassed fashion.

“Sir, sir, um, sir. I was wondering if you had anything I could use to revise for this exam.”

“For this exam?”

“The GCSE exam.”

“Paper 1 or 2?”

“Um, both.”

“Actually I think I may just have. Hold on till I check if I have an extra copy.”

I started to root around in my drawer for the sheaves of paper. He looked panicked and slammed a USB pen drive on my desk, shutting the drawer with his thigh as he did so.

“I was thinking you could copy the files onto this – you know – to save you any hassle.”

“Not a problem, give me a sec and I’ll do it now.”

Again the panic. He was looking at the door as much as he was looking at me now. It was obvious he didn’t want to be seen.

“I was thinking I could maybe pick them up in a bit. You’ll still be here in half an hour?”

And with that he was gone. And I was left holding a memory pen wondering what on earth had just happened.

It was simple of course. The young man, who incidentally had spent most of the three weeks I’d been teaching him with his feet on the desk pretending to sleep, wanted to pass his exam – but he didn’t want anyone to know that it mattered to him. I honestly believe that, if he’d been discovered in his English room, he would have come up with some excuse before disappearing and gone into the exam revision-material-less. His image was more important to him than his exams. Hopefully I won’t sound overly dramatic when I say that his image was more important to him than his future.

It’s a real problem here. Working in secondary schools I see it all the time – and it’s not easy to break through. Maybe it’s different in the grammar school sector with their super ambitious career students - but try getting any of the pupils here to admit that they like school or specific subjects is very difficult – getting them to admit that they want to be good at something like English is almost impossible.

The problem is they do want to be good at it. They do want to pass. They want to pass with the greatest marks ever achieved in the history of GCSEs. There is real tragedy then in the way their pride engages their logic in an horrific battle to the death; their relationship with success like the doomed potential love affair between two passing strangers in a William Trevor short story.

That student came and picked up his memory pen. When he’s gone through the notes he’ll understand what is expected of him better than he did before he read it – but whether it will be enough to make up for two years of self imposed apathy is doubtful. It may well be too late for him.

As for me – well I start doing what I can for people like the girl in the year below him. It pains me that I can’t effortlessly inspire every one of the little people - o captain! my captain! But I can’t. And I have to keep telling myself that three weeks is never going to be enough time to perform miracles. Tiny steps great journeys make... Or something like that.
Next year that girl will be sitting those exams and hopefully she, and those around her, will take more pride in their successes than their indifference. We can but hope and pray.