4/26/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: First Communion

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

What is a grade?

Having just sent our third quarter report cards last week for our students, this question repeats itself here and in hundreds of thousands of schools across the country two or three or at most, four times a year. My cooperating teacher for my student teaching experience in 1978 is famous for her quote, “You are not your grades.” St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, loudly proclaims, “Yes, we give grades, but we’re too polite to tell you what they are.”

Some grades are traditional letter grades from A-F, skipping E because it doesn’t fit with “flunk.” Some grades are number grades. Some grades are number grades translated into letters. An 89.4 might be a “B” but add one tenth of a point to an 89.5 and it magically becomes an “A.” Some grades are the numbers 1-4. Some grades, as we do here, are other letters of the alphabet that represent the word or words they are short for.

“E” is used in this case, but it doesn’t mean “excellent” as you might surmise, but “exceeding the standard.”

How do we get our grades? What determines them? This question is as old as the establishment of schools themselves. Teachers pride themselves on being fair and accurate in their grading, but even the best teachers out there will admit in their heart of hearts and bone of bones that there is an arbitrary nature to all grading. What made up the grade? Was it a test? Was the test a true indication of student’s knowledge? What if the teacher picked this spelling word rather than that one? Does homework count? Can you give a zero for work not completed? Can you give bonus points? Grades are inexact measures of how a teacher perceives a student has done during the grading period.

But just as grades are arbitrary so is life. The policeman on the freeway pulls you over for speeding. Are you the only one speeding? No, he happened to point his radar at you that day. Scottie Scheffler, who won the Master’s Golf Tournament this year, took over three million dollars home for his trouble. Cameron Smith and Bryson DeChambeau, who tied for sixth place each took home $695,000—a good long weekend’s paycheck, but no three million. The difference between first and sixth was simply the fact that it took them nine more strokes to play 72 holes than it did Scheffler.

Last week, Cucho had a chance to win the Crew game against Portland with a free kick. The ball hit the bar instead of going in. Who decided that the goal should only be 24 feet wide? If it were 25, Cucho would have scored. The Crew would have won.

I could go on and on. Grades, like life, are varied by grade level, by subject, by school. I have been sitting on a Diocesan task force for months where some of the best educational minds in our system (present company excluded!) have been grappling with this question. At the end of the day, grades are one measure of a student’s success in the classroom. Not the only measure to be sure, but nonetheless an important one.

Students who succeed in the game of school are like a good hitter in baseball (I’m sorry for the sports analogies ad nauseum). A good hitter adjusts to the pitcher he is facing. He adjusts to the umpire’s generous or strict interpretation of the strike zone. He adjusts to the dimensions of the park and who is on base and where.

A good student adjusts as well. She does her homework, keeps herself organized, knows what kind of questions the teacher is likely to ask, and pays attention in class. She may be naturally smart and finds school easy, or she may struggle with a learning difficulty but takes advantage of all the help to which she is entitled.



All of us who get along in life (more or less) learn to adjust. As a parent, as an employee, as a spouse, as a friend. We try our best of navigate through life, trying to keep ahead, sometimes two steps forward and one step back. We don’t take our success too seriously and we learn from our failures. I bet there are very few of us who can remember what grade we got in social studies during the third quarter of fourth grade. Whether it was spectacular or spectacularly bad, we moved on from it to our next challenge, realizing that it is not one single thing we do in life that determines our measure, but our day-to-day ability to learn, to grow and adjust. Isn’t this what we hope for our children?

Jim Silcott