Emerging and Extending!
“The clouds lifted and there it was. The mountain which had for so long hidden its majesty suddenly emerged”.
“The kraken woke and emerged from the swamp, horrific in its ugliness, minatory from head to foot.”
“His head throbbed, his tongue sandpapered, his keys under his pillow, Ian emerged from the bed struggling to recollect the previous evening.”
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Dear Friends I used to like the word ‘emerge’ and variants thereof. It conjured the birth of foals; butterflies from cocoons; turkeys arriving at table at Christmas time; sun behind a cloud. You name it there it was bringing joy and happiness to my day. But, Dear Reader, I have fallen out of love with ‘emerging’ as a word and I am going to bore you with why.
You see bureaucratic jargon has now adopted it as its own, primarily in school report cards. It has come to represent something inchoate, a beginning, a slow tumescence from which Billy’s understanding of equations is somewhere in an unknown ether about to appear at some distant date in the future. His teacher doesn’t know when, probably doesn’t know how but is confident that it is the final push of a difficult pregnancy. Meanwhile your average parents are tearing each other’s hair out because they have nothing concrete to draw upon. Do they need to employ a tutor during the summer holidays? Will the birthing require a Caesarean? Will there be a catastrophic collapse in the tunnel blocking any emergence for years to come?
‘Extending’ is another word that is appearing in report cards. Be assured that if your child is ‘extending’ then he or she has a full understanding of the curricula so much so that it is time for a bigger challenge. Everybody wants an ‘extending’; it is 90%; it’s DQ with toppings; Disneyland beckons; it’s the Stanley Cup of reports. Walk out into the aura, proud pupil of the year, and announce to the waiting throng of your loved ones that you have achieved ‘extension’. At this point there is no up from up, Everest has been climbed, Olympic Gold has been won. Your parents and you would like to take the next step but, at this point, there is no next step. “Extension’ becomes a border guard, a wall, a blockage.
So, Dear Reader, I do get it. There did need to be an improvement from the 1960s where report cards read something like:-
“Had a wonderful year. Happy Holidays”.
In other words the teacher has an urgent appointment with the golf course and matches his pupils in his desire to flee the coop. There have been some classic report cards. Peter Ustinov was told that ‘he shows great initiative which should be stifled at all costs”. A friend of mine was told at the beginning of the year that ‘he has a wonderful sense of humour’ which had worn a bit thin when June arrived when ‘He is a clown!” appeared on his year end report. I liked the one that read:-
“Eric is an explorer. He will venture into the bush cutting a virgin path with a vigorous machete, sweating and determined, proceeding towards a goal, a ‘terra incognita’ while his fellow students are proceeding down a tarmacked road 5 feet from his exploration. They are leisured and measured, their route forward is known, their destination is predetermined. Eric needs to step back onto the road and make life easier both for himself and his teacher. He needs to set aside the hammer because the teaspoon will do. This has been a term of endurance and suffering for both Eric and me. I hope that the Dinnergong family have a wonderful summer together, I look forward to working with you all again next year if I complete my therapy.”
OK, so all of this could be covered by ‘emerging’ and ‘extending’ but I suggest to you, Friends, that in November these two words might have a charge of vigour about them but, at the third time of asking, they are nothing more than the bland leading the bland. Heavily charged with atmosphere at the beginning they are a deep yawn in a chasm full of yawns by the time summer is knocking at the door.
It is true that teachers are doomed to moderate their expressions and their language so that they are not hauled over the coals by inadvertent phrases and throwaway thumpers of remarks designed to bolt-upright the backs of parents who see only Harvard in their child’s future. Not for them the off the wall thinker, the eccentric, the non-conformist of a child despite the fact we all know that the most innovative and creative of people are those who rarely tow the line. No, these parents want the safe route, the steady path, the tried and trusty. And indeed there is a place for that for the majority but so often it is in the minority that our better hopes for the future lie.
Teachers are now on holiday for the summer in the northern hemisphere. The last thing they should be considering is the writing of report cards. I know what many stressful hours that has entailed over the years. I also realise that research has striven to streamline an onerous system so that teachers can devote less time to reporting and more time to pursuing excellence in the classroom. Nor do I dismiss lightly and arrogantly the research that has gone into finding the perfect terminology. At some time in the near future the report card system will be fully immersed and produced by Artificial Intelligence. I suppose that I feel about this new best thing they call AI what Dickens felt about the new.
“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”
I am sure that it will work well. But, Dear Reader, will it give that which my rugby report gave in January, 1970?
“Peter has surprised many people, not least himself, by holding down a First XV place this season.”
This is etched in my memory. To many people it is not a roaring endorsement but to me it represents some of the kindest words anybody has ever said about me. Why? Because the coaches who wrote them were people whom I still honour and hero worship to this day. I humbly suggest, Dear Reader, that Artificial Intelligence is unlikely to be held in such high esteem.
To young teachers and parents reading this, they must see old fogey-ness leaping from every sentence and phrase. So be it. I haven’t written a report in 7 years, I am swimming in a different channel now. But I think, Dear Friends, that it is not too incongruous to suggest that our thoughts, yours and mine, may be elsewhere but also in the same place.
Thanks for reading.
