Report Card

Last week we got Henry's first report card-- our first-ever as parents. First, the degree and specificity of feedback was amazing. There were eight categories (literacy, writing, science, art, music, PE, etc) and within each category, there were between six and fifteen individual grades, on a 1 to 4 scale. There's always something deeply fascinating about hearing about your child from someone else. At our teacher conferences in the past, I've always been starved for information and evaluation of my child, just to have an outsider's perspective. I don't know many children intimately, so my two define the norm for me. Preschool feedback generally seemed diplomatic and bland, and so I didn't get a strong sense of perspective-adjustment from that. If you had asked me to evaluate Henry's strengths and weaknesses, I would have said he's very physical and sporty, he's smart, and he's not too musical or interested in art. (One thing I do remember his toddler teacher saying, when he was two, is that he enjoyed all the activities in the classroom except painting. She was surprised to learn that his father was a painter!)

Now, for the first time, someone-- many people, actually, since each different specialty subject has a different teacher-- has graded my child's performance and abilities. And what do you think he's good at, at least right now? Well, overall he is doing very, very well, and we're very proud of him. But his strongest special subjects (outside reading and math) were music and art. He got high marks for accuracy in singing (have they heard the tuneless renditions of 'This Land Is Your Land' I get every day?!?), and special praise from the art teacher. They also do art projects in the regular classroom, and his regular teachers noted his careful, precise work as well. His two worst subjects, on average? Science and PE. In PE, he's not so good at the throwing and kicking skills. And the only item for which he received a "1" (which basically indicates complete cluelessness) was in the science category: drawing a conclusion from evidence.

Oh, the shame!

On reflection, of course, this makes perfect sense: while we have a crafts table in the living room, permanently stocked with art supplies, Henry is not enrolled in any organized sports. Of course he's good at art; our norm for artsiness is just probably far outside the social norm. (The failure at drawing scientific conclusions is harder to explain away; you can bet I'm ordering a science kit for Christmas!) Despite our sturdiest self-delusions, then, we are raising not a sporty polymath with a sharp analytical mind, but a little clone of ourselves: artsy, craftsy, very fit but not skilled at any team sport, creative and a good leader but not so good at observing the facts of the natural world, and a little high-strung with a tendency toward perfectionism.

Whose report card was this, anyway?