As it was in the begining....

I was looking through my old school reports the other day. They stretch from age 7 to 17. They chart the decline of my educational abilities from "excellent work" and "this boy is happy, helpful and a good worker" down to "this boy is lazy and unless he undertakes serious revision will fail - disaster looms!"

I'm not sure who must have been most disappointed with the latter remark, my parents or the teacher involved. It wasn't me. It was water off a ducks back. If everyone manages to find their own level of incompetence I succeded at a relatively early age.

Teachers these days are not allowed to make negative comments any more and thus the children of today will never have such gems levied at them as those of the students of my day. No teacher these days would dare write "this boy would be out of his depth in a puddle!". No wonder teachers are leaving their profession when all the fun has been stopped. There was a boy in my year who received the comment "this boy would feel much more at home in a circus". I believe that comment came from our biology teacher "Frogspawn" Jones. His circus comments were not unusual but in one case accurately predictive as the boy involved did in fact pursue a career as a clown, and quite a succesful one at that.

Were the teachers right about my laziness? Not quite. What they were actually seeing was a child who relied on natural ability and never put in more effort than natural ability allowed. A child who became an adult with the same trait.