My fourth grader's grades seem to be based 10% on his subject matter mastery and 90% on my ability to track moving test dates and figure out why seemingly equivalent assignments have radically different weights. He has no interest in doing this and I am trying to make him at least conscious of it.
I have realized that I will be spending this year modeling grade grubbing for him and that is what he will learn. He's certainly not learning much else in school.
We sat down to review for a science test last night. He was told NOT to bring the book home, because all the material was on four worksheets. The material was further restricted to only the highlighted sections. I started quizzing him on the highlighted sections and he interrupted me to simply recite it all almost verbatim. It was such a minimal amount of material and it's heart-breaking to think how many times they must have gone over it for him to have memorized it.
I find the grades issue to be a tough thing. My son is clearly being tested on material that is way belong his ability level. Yet he does manage to make silly mistakes and get poor grades on occasion. It's hard to know how to balance the leaning and grades. At this stage (he's nine) it's obvious that his learning is still more important that his ability to prove it in an institutional setting. But at a certain point the ability to demonstrate knowledge using externally imposed standards becomes important and a lack if it will definitely constitute incompetence.
I don't want him to end up working in a comic book store talking about whether or not Superman's ability to fly violates the laws of physics.
