When I was growing up in rural Maine, it was the custom for the eighth-graders — all of 10 or 12 of them — to play hooky on the day before graduation. The teachers hated this, and when my cohort’s turn came, one of them warned us that if we cut class he’d give us D’s or F’s, even if we were A students. By blessed coincidence my report card arrived before my father got home. Jerking open the envelope, I regarded for one awful moment the terrible carbon-copied D and then ran upstairs, folded the report into a tiny square, and wedged it into a gap in the floorboards at the back of my closet. My father forgot to ask about my final grades, but my guilt burned for years. (Dad? Sorry.) Pity today’s eighth-graders, who haven’t a prayer of pulling off such a stunt. Because of the miracle — or curse, depending — of online grading, their parents see every fluctuation in their work, with e-mails shooting homeward often after every quiz.
This ought to be a good thing, right? Improving parent-school communication, keeping students on their toes, busting kids who play hooky, giving everyone another excuse to spend life online – the list goes on.
