I pretty much agree with everything you said here, but have reservations about the part in red. My reservations regard today's societal mindset, and while I cannot and will not dismiss the possibility that you are correct, it is also possible that they changed it simply in an effort to placate the mother and hope she'd go away and leave them alone. Not dissimilar to companies settling frivolous lawsuits over product liability when they know the plaintiff is wrong, but it's cheaper and more expedient to just settle.
We think you're still incorrigible. :2razz:
When I was a freshman in high school, I was practically incorrigible. I got completely lost in my advanced geometry class and stopped turning in homework. The teacher told me she was going to give me an F. Well! I couldn't get an F!! If I got an F? They'd mail a failure notice to my parents!! And I always faked my report cards. Oh, noes!!!
I begged and pleaded with the teacher. "Please, PLEASE, don't fail me!!!" She made me a deal. If I turned in every one of my homework assignments and they were acceptable, she wouldn't give me an F. I got another student to do them for me for $50 and showed up one morning with a bright smile on my face. Turned them in with pride. (!!) She looked at the stack of papers, rifled through them, and dropped them in the garbage can. OMG. But, she was a woman of her word. I got a D--.
Ahhh, memories.
That story made me smile Maggie. Both for you and for the teacher. Great story. You were a little malcontent it would seem. But a clever one.
When I taught high school government, it was a senior level class that every single kid had to pass to graduate and that was by state law. You could fail math or english or science or gym and still graduate if you had enough credits but if you had straight A's in everything else but failed Government you were screwed. And as you are well aware, all a high school senior wants to do is graduate and will run through a wall to do that.
So on the first day of class I gave them all the course outline with a complete break down of how the grades are computed. And part of it told them about the state graduation requirement and how they simply had to pass this course to graduate. And it said something like this:
Lets assume you get 100% on every test I give you.
You turn in every assignment and it is perfectly done.
Every time I ask a question, yours is the first had to go up and you always have the correct answer.
You do lots of extra credit work.
You have perfect attendance.
You know more about government than I do.
After all that you can still fail this class.
The purpose of Government class is to help make you a good citizen. That begins in this class. A good citizen respects the rights of the rest of society and is an asset to it rather than a negative force.
So in this class, if you are a bad citizen as evidenced by disruptive or bad behavior, YOU WILL FAIL. Your test will not matter. Your work will not matter. Your intelligence will not matter. You have failed the most basic of all requirements of being a good citizen and you have FAILED yourself.
I then went on to explain that under the current contract, only one person in the entire state had the legal power to change a grade once it was given. Guess who that was?
So I then had the kids take the information home and had their parents sign it and had the kids sign it.
Every once in a rare while I would have to have a discussion with a student and hand them their signed outline and ask them to review the terms they and their parents had agreed to. But not often.
Lots of learning was done in that class and many kids often thanked me for an environment where the buttwipes were not allowed to stink up the room with their usual crap.
I wonder if I would get sued today for doing the exact same thing?
When I was a freshman in high school, I was practically incorrigible. I got completely lost in my advanced geometry class and stopped turning in homework. The teacher told me she was going to give me an F. Well! I couldn't get an F!! If I got an F? They'd mail a failure notice to my parents!! And I always faked my report cards. Oh, noes!!!
I begged and pleaded with the teacher. "Please, PLEASE, don't fail me!!!" She made me a deal. If I turned in every one of my homework assignments and they were acceptable, she wouldn't give me an F. I got another student to do them for me for $50 and showed up one morning with a bright smile on my face. Turned them in with pride. (!!) She looked at the stack of papers, rifled through them, and dropped them in the garbage can. OMG. But, she was a woman of her word. I got a D--.
Ahhh, memories.
That story made me smile Maggie. Both for you and for the teacher. Great story. You were a little malcontent it would seem. But a clever one.
When I taught high school government, it was a senior level class that every single kid had to pass to graduate and that was by state law. You could fail math or english or science or gym and still graduate if you had enough credits but if you had straight A's in everything else but failed Government you were screwed. And as you are well aware, all a high school senior wants to do is graduate and will run through a wall to do that.
So on the first day of class I gave them all the course outline with a complete break down of how the grades are computed. And part of it told them about the state graduation requirement and how they simply had to pass this course to graduate. And it said something like this:
Lets assume you get 100% on every test I give you.
You turn in every assignment and it is perfectly done.
Every time I ask a question, yours is the first had to go up and you always have the correct answer.
You do lots of extra credit work.
You have perfect attendance.
You know more about government than I do.
After all that you can still fail this class.
The purpose of Government class is to help make you a good citizen. That begins in this class. A good citizen respects the rights of the rest of society and is an asset to it rather than a negative force.
So in this class, if you are a bad citizen as evidenced by disruptive or bad behavior, YOU WILL FAIL. Your test will not matter. Your work will not matter. Your intelligence will not matter. You have failed the most basic of all requirements of being a good citizen and you have FAILED yourself.
I then went on to explain that under the current contract, only one person in the entire state had the legal power to change a grade once it was given. Guess who that was?
So I then had the kids take the information home and had their parents sign it and had the kids sign it.
Every once in a rare while I would have to have a discussion with a student and hand them their signed outline and ask them to review the terms they and their parents had agreed to. But not often.
Lots of learning was done in that class and many kids often thanked me for an environment where the buttwipes were not allowed to stink up the room with their usual crap.
I wonder if I would get sued today for doing the exact same thing?
