Next, I turned to the pages that had truly been the focus of my reading at the time – the grades.

“Children vary greatly in their ability to learn, and the progress of this child is not compared with that of another.”

Although I was glad to read this, I’m not sure that my parents read or agreed with it at the time. As I remember, my progress was ALWAYS compared with that of another, particularly the much brighter girls in the class at the time.

“This report is made according to the best judgment of the teacher.”

My questionable skills in arithmetic to this day, make it impossible for me to calculate the number of times over my school career that I have disagreed with the “best judgment of the teacher.” The reason for this disagreement I later found in some of the teacher’s comments added to the grades at the end of each six-week period.

“A check () indicates progress.”

It seemed so simple.  A check mark in one of the boxes – there were only three.  “Very Good,” “Satisfactory,” and the dreaded, “Needs to Make Much Improvement,” explained whether we were making progress and in which category that progress was concentrated – or not.

And, at my house, the “or not,” had consequences. Had my “progress” check-mark ever dropped into the Needs to Make Much Improvement box, it is doubtful that I would have survived to offer this commentary. My father had a short temper and had grown-up in a church where the Old Testament admonition regarding “spare the rod and spoil the child,” was a sin that parents should never commit.

Even today, I felt relief seeing the check-marks clustered safely in the Satisfactory box, some even showing a (+). Phew, could that be the equivalent of a C+?

There were six areas of Knowledge on which we focused our attention during our school day, including: Social Studies (social living, history, geography, current events); Science; Arithmetic; Language Arts (reading, literature, oral and written composition, spelling, penmanship); The Arts; and, Health and Physical Education. There was a box for participation in other activities, although none were ever listed on any of my report cards. During the entire first half of my sixth grade learning experience, I only received two Very Goods – in Language Arts.