Let's Talk About Johnny

It may be because it is report card season but sometimes I like to read this quote aloud in a metallic, machine like voice;  "Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is crime happening. "  Then I try this in the same voice:  "the student uses a variety of texts with some proficiency."

The first quote is from the classic 1987 film RoboCop and the second is the ever popular comment number 111 from the secondary school report card comment bank.  I know, it's one of my favourites too! Sometimes when it's late at night and I am a little punchy, I like to read the comment bank aloud in a Schwarzenegger accent, circa Terminator One.

There's no shame in it.

RoboCop was the coolest of movies. It came at a time where we were on the cusp of the computer and the Internet.  It was also the year I was at the Faculty of Education.  It seemed like the entire conscious of the society was focused on the tension between human and machine.  You could see that tension in RoboCop as the human heart of the police officer tried to emerge from the technological cage in which it had been trapped.

Teachers and parents and students are trapped in a similar technological cage.  The primary mode of communication between parents and teachers is the report card and the parent interview.  The report card has been co-opted in the name of efficiency by technology, reducing reporting to a list of events or the frequency of a student's performance.  "Sally should make better use of class time to complete homework." (comment #59), setting aside the contradiction of homework being completed in class, the comment doesn't tell us anything about Sally.  Johnny has "some use of features of formal and informal communication." (comment # 734).  Can anyone tell me what Johnny has been doing?

I gave up using the canned comments long ago, choosing to write my own comments to the parents of my students.  Not every teacher is comfortable with this and I am sure many a parent would have preferred that I had hidden my assessment of their child in edu-babble but I think that at least they knew I knew their kid. The idea of all teachers writing their own, hand crafted and original comments, must terrify boards of education.

So we remain trapped by the technological structures that surround reporting.  If this is true, then our last best chance to talk to each other, is the parent interview.  If we are ever to have an honest and important discussion of our children, it takes place in the gyms and classrooms on parent nights but it will require some work on all of our parts.

Parents, you need to go to interviews.  It may shock you, but the majority of parents don't go to interviews. You need to go, listen, question and help the teacher know your child better.  Teachers, close the computer, put away the print out, shut down the screens.   Look across the desk and begin with "I know Johnny and there are some things I want to tell you."

No one is allowed to do this in a Schwarzenegger accent.