By: W.C. Reader

One of these days, we might drop by a couple of the area schools and see what kind of report cards are carried home by students to let their parent know how they are doing in school. And if we follow through on this, it won’t be because we are trying to stir up trouble. It’s just because we were prowling through some boxes the other day and came upon several of our own report cards which went back to the 1920’s and 1930’s, when we were attending Kenedy Grammar school in Kenedy. We examined them very carefully to see they contained no incriminating evidence before we decided to go further with this project.

The interesting thing about these report cards is that they called for monthly reports from our teacher on the academic subjects, which we were taking on particular grade level. Among the traditional subjects on which each student received grades from the teacher were such as Reading, English, Spelling, Arithmetic, Geography, History, Physiology, Writing, and Drawing. Also tossed in, much to the embarrassment of some students was a grade in Deportment (Conduct), and an attendance report on the number of days present, absent and tardy.

But the usual thing about the aforesaid report cards was that they contained a section called “Home Report”. This required the parents to grade their children on a number of activities around the home, and send it back to the teacher. Among these activities were such things as Outside Reading, Canning, Care of Stock, Care of Poultry, Cooking, Gardening, and General Farm Work. Other items were Ironing, Milking, Providing of Fuel, Sewing, Sweeping, Washing Dishes, Special Work, Health Habits, and Study Habits. What do you present day students think of that? It would appear that we, your forebears, were placed in double jeopardy.

Now on closer examination of these three report cards of our for the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grades, we noticed that we came close to having straight A’s for all the academic subjects. We duly pointed this out to our good wife, Doris, figuring it might make points with her. But she kept her eyes riveted on grades we earned during one month in the fifth grade. All of the grades for that particular period were A’s with exception of deportment, where our grade dipped to 85. “How?” our sharp-eyed wife inquired, “can a student receive top grades in everything except conduct, and then have that grade plummet to 85? It seems pretty inconsistent to me”. After hasty consideration, we replied it must have been the time when we were taking a little nap during an arithmetic lesson. This matter was duly noticed by the teacher who paused briefly to throw a piece of chalk at us. Her intention could not be misunderstood but her aim was poor, and the girl who at in front of us, Ruth Langford, was the one whose head stopped the missile. A thoroughly confused teacher came over and apologized to Ruth, and then returned to her desk, where she came kept a wary eye pointed in our direction for the rest of the day.

And what was our reward for having been an onlooker of sorts during this incident? Well, at the end of the month we received an 85 in conduct on our report card, along with the ignominy of having to explain it to our parents. And it remained at a steady B-level for each of the remaining three months of the school year.

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