School Report Cards, Then and Now

When I was at school some years ago, the teachers had no qualms about telling my parents exactly how I was doing. “Needs to pay attention in class” was a typical comment. My marks were given in percentages, and lest my parents be under any misapprehension about my progress, my ranking in class was given as well. I was usually somewhere in the middle.

In my final year, a new course, geology, was offered in keeping with the emphasis on science in those early Sputnik days. It was taught by an inexperienced university student, who happened to be a very generous marker. I was attracted to this course as an easy alternative to French, and I did very well, boosting my class average considerably. As a result, my report card recorded that I was “second in class”, but to make my status quite clear a comment was added: “Average boosted by high geology mark”. In those days, report cards were not concerned with the child’s self esteem but gave the parents a clear and accurate account of their child’s academic progress.

Not so today. According to an article by Michael Zwaagstra in the Gobe and Mail May 7 entitled “School report cards should be clear, not confusing”, the BC Education Ministry has decreed that that students in grades eight and nine will no longer receive letter grades or percentages on their report cards, but instead be deemed Emerging, Developing, Proficient or Extending. God help the parents hoping to learn how their child is progressing in school! No children should feel that they have failed, of course, so the Emerging category includes “both students at the beginning stages of grade level expectations, as well as those before grade level expectations.” There is no category for the student who is Not Progressing or Regressing.

As the Gobe article points out, the curriculum document is full of “gobbledygook” and “meaningless verbiage”. And the awkward syntax of the quoted extracts reveals the mindset of the curriculum writers who can’t be clear even to themselves. How can a student be at a “stage” of an expectation or “before” an expectation? But of course, we mustn’t say that he or she “fails to meet” an expectation.

Apart from the failure to give a precise account of the student’s progress, there is an another serious consequence of this kind of nonsense. The absurdities on the Left can cause otherwise sensible people to move to the Right. A small percentage of British voters, fed up with the excesses of European regulations and red tape, voted for Brexit. Enough to make the difference. And on our own continent, dangerous leaders on the right who condemn the wokery of the left may attract voters who would normally give them a wide berth.

As a side note, all my life I have regretted abandoning the rather demanding French course for the soft option. Furthermore, encouraged by my inflated geology mark to think that I was better than I was, I went on to complete a science degree majoring in that subject, only to realize that I had chosen the wrong path. Later I spent a year in France wishing that I had continued the language at school.

Breakfast for Vegans

In the Guardian this morning, I read an interesting recipe for Christmas breakfast hash that offers hope to vegans tiring of their plant-based diet. After suggesting the various leftovers that might be tossed into this fry-up, the recipe continues:

Vegans might wish to substitute the egg for unsweetened plant-based yoghurt, seasoned with salt and a little crushed garlic. 

I sense a huge sigh of relief all over the Vegan World. Gone, it seems, is the Draconian requirement that everything in the vegan diet be plant-based. What next? May cow’s milk be substituted for oat milk in the breakfast coffee? May a sizzling bit of bacon be substituted for a bland piece of tofu? Vegans will be looking forward to the next recipe in the Guardian!

Applechords

In the beginning was the 30-pin dock connector,

And the 30-pin dock connector was Apple.

And the the 30-pin dock connector was with Apple.

A voluminous tangle of long, white cords,

Many with the common touch,

A standard USB, as such,

Ubiquitous, across the boards,

And at the other, a miniscule misnomer,

Not to be found in the days of Homer on the wine dark sea: 

A lightning connector, 

But prone to disconnection from detritus in my pocket,

As mud and crud and dirt and dust deposit in the socket.

USB-A was the old USB,

Now it’s been replaced by USB-C

And the lightning connector, it has gone as well,

But only on the IPad, or so I hear tell.

And what is the consequence of all this innovation?

Confusion, bewilderment, and massive frustration!

Accoutrements to past pods, pads and mobile phones 

Arriving in the flat white box.

Your familiar and fully functional devices

The open sesame to all life’s spices

Rendered obsolete by the Corporate Machine

Unable to receive IOS Umpteen,

Nor alas, the very latest versions of your apps,

“We really had to do it.  So very sorry, chaps.”

———

I migrated from a Microsoft computer to Apple, many years ago, persuaded by many that it was better. And it was. And then came the iPod, and the iPod touch, the early iPhone, and the iPad, all with the 30-pin dock connector. But then, with the iPad mini, and later iPads and iPhones, came the lightning connector, and all of these, from first to last, with a USB at the other end of the chord. All was well. Stability and interchangeability!

But recently I bought a new IPhone SE and an IPad mini, because my old ones no longer accepted the latest versions of things. And the old cords and chargers no longer work with new devices. Frustration!

Shakespeare

 

I wonder how many listeners recognized the Shakespearean line in the King’s moving tribute to his mother. The line is so beautiful it brings tears to the eyes. My generation would likely have recognized it, for in those days, studying Shakespeare was a part of going to school.

Not so, for the current generation of graduates, it seems. Recently I heard tell of an English teacher who declined to teach Shakespeare because she thought that teaching an indigenous novel was more important. Surely one can teach Shakespeare as well as the indigenous novel: to deprive students of exposure to the greatest writer of all is to miss the purpose of education.

Fortunate are those students whose teachers lead them not only to books with a moral or political message, but to the great works of poetry as well.

May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Senior’s Residences

 

I feel so sorry for the fellow who lives here , all alone in not one but several residences. This is hardly in keeping with the City’s new infill housing policy, which seeks to increase population density. The sign appeared at least a year ago, so he’s been by himself for a while now. Does he long for companions? He may have a lady friend who would like to join him, but that is clearly against the rules. Only one senior is allowed. So sad!

Career and Careen

Endeavour Careened by Kevin Charles Hart

It is pleasing when someone uses a word precisely and correctly. It happened like this. My friend Paul was recounting one of his nautical yarns. Paul has happy memories of sailing around Vancouver Island and across the Salish Sea. He enjoys a coffee at the Oak Bay Marina, overlooking the boats that bring back these memories. That is where we were when he told me this story. 

He was moored for the evening in a bay on San Juan Island, settling in for his tumbler of scotch, when his tranquility was disturbed by another boat heading for the shore. Towing a dinghy, it cruised in gently,  dropped anchor, and stopped short as the anchor held, but before the the motor was cut, the dinghy drifted on towards the boat. I cannot convey the sound as the rope wound around the propeller, but Paul did a pretty good job with a series of whirrs of varying pitch followed by a clunk.

Much consternation and dismay! Ever the gentleman sailor, Paul offered to help the inexperienced boatmen, who were at their wits’ end. The next morning he towed them to shore. And in Paul’s words:

“Using a winch and a line fastened high up the mast,” he said, “we careened the boat on the sand, exposing one side of the hull and some of the propeller, so we could get at the rope and remove it.”

Now these were hapless, but not reckless, Americans. Their boat had not careered towards the shore, swerving from side to side as they wrestled with the wheel. No, they had approached the shore slowly, not realizing the danger as the dinghy rope slackened. This was an edifying tale of inexperience and a helping hand, and Paul’s skill in careening the boat was equalled only by his correct use of the nautical word.

Nor were they the first sailors to careen their boat. Before the age of steam and steel, it was not uncommon for vessels to be careened to scrape away the barnacles or repair the hull. Captain Cook careened the Endeavour after striking a coral reef in North Queensland.

Conversational Fillers

“I’ll be leaving in, like, half an hour,” said my grandson. 

I refrained from responding, “When, exactly, will you be leaving?” as I might have done, a generation ago, pedantic parent that I was.

In my generation, “you know” had become the common interruptor. What once was a parenthetical phrase to emphasize a point, or invite the listener to agree, had become a filler for an awkward pause, or even, in extreme cases, a tic, of which the speaker was completely unaware. Sometimes, one could, you know, count a dozen or so, you know, tics in a paragraph. But at least in the beginning, “you know” made some sense, either as a statement or a question.

Not so the ubiquitous “like”, which has now replaced “you know” as a conversational tic, particularly among younger people. And yet, consciously or unconsciously on the part of the speaker, “like” may be performing a grammatical function. In an article in Time (May 21, 2014) entitled “Here’s What to Say to That Jerk Who Corrects Your Grammar”, Katy Steinmetz quotes from the book Bad English by Ammon Shea.

Shea explains that while "like" may be  staple of the Valley Girl caricature, the word is actually performing useful linguistic duties:

• In the sentence “She was like, ‘Get out of my face,” the word signals the beginning of a quote and is known as a quotatative compartmentalizer.
• In the sentence “It’s going to take me like forever to get there,” it functions as an approximative adverb, signaling how strongly to interpret the following word; "almost" and "barely" play similar roles.
• In the sentences “I stole a panda. Like, I couldn’t live without him,” "like" is a discourse marker, a word used at the beginning of a sentence indicating that a clarification of what has just been said will now be given; one might similarly use "I mean" to introduce more information.

Quotatative compartmentalizer, approximative adverb, or discourse marker.

Was my grandson using “like” as an approximative adverb, or was he exhibiting a verbal tic?

The redundant “like” was around long before the Valley Girls. I first encountered it in the north of England in the sixties, when a Yorkshireman or Lancastrian might say “Where are you going today, like?” Or, “There was once a coal mine over there, like.”

This usage would perhaps fall into the third of Shea’s categories, a variation of the discourse marker, a kind of emphasis at the end rather than the beginning of the sentence, meaning, “I’m asking you,” or “I’m telling you.”

And as for the quotatative compartmentalizer, here are a few snippets from the reaction of some rural Australians who thought the world was coming to an end when they witnessed an eerie glow in the sky rising from a marijuana factory. From one speaker:

"But in my head I'm like, what the hell is that?"

"Mum's on the phone and Dad's in the background going: 'I better hurry up and eat my tea because the world's ending.'"

"And Mum's like: 'What's the point of eating your tea if the world's ending?’”

And another:

"I was having a big Stranger Things moment - I'm like, Vecna? Is that you?" she said, referencing a villain from the TV series. 

To read the full story on the BBC and see the eerie glow, visit https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62261094