But, look, folks, isn’t it possible that some people have unreasonably low expectations for their kids? OP didn’t confront these people about this, apparently.
C’s are not acceptable, nor a peak for any student, unless the child has a real learning disability. Average high schools these days give B’s for showing up. Half the school is on the 3.5+ GPA honor roll, it’s a joke.
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How do you know the child doesn’t, though?
Sorry I triggered any agnostic and atheist folks with the church going detail. I will make a mental note that it is a micro aggression to disclose a family attends church if they attend church.
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This is my opinion, others may have different opinions:
I think the current focus on grades by many parents is not only absurd but harmful. Grades seem to be the way some parents are trying to establish their own position in society. It makes me sick.
Grades are a proxy for the amount (or level or thoroughness) that has been learned/mastered by the student in a particular topic area. The focus should be on things like…mastering material, learning about the world, gaining a better understanding of something, pursuing knowledge, understanding and mastery over a body of work/field, etc. But grade focused parents often fail to get that part of the equation. Instead they see the connection between grades and prestige-getting into a “good college” being admired, being viewed as “good” parents. They are focused on the wrong end of the stream of events–they often are obsessed with outcome not with the link to intellectual mastery and understanding of the world or of a topic matter.
And their kids are often those that use grades to motivate themselves-to beat out others or to “do better” on subsequent tests compared to previous levels. And many adults view this as great (as in “he/she is motivated!”). Yeah, motivated for what? And those that are most compliant with what their parents want can end up with straight As. In fact, many valedictorians are like that. Abut often these kind of students, while filled with potential, have had the “interest” and “exploration” beaten out of them in favor of chasing points and grades. So, rather than thinking it is wonderful, I think those students motivated by grades instead of by mastery are very sad. And I think they contaminate the college atmosphere.
Contaminate? Yes. Have you every observed a class where most students are engaged in a lively conversation about a point and a hand jets up “Will this be on the test”? And all the enthusiasm is sucked right out the window? That is a grade grubber. And who are the students more interested in the form of the upcoming test than the content of the class? The grade grubbing valedictorian who has never had the opportunity to develop any genuine interests because he/she was too busy pleasing parents by chasing points and grades. And who bows out of classes with discussion in favor of opening up an extra hour to memorize facts for the next test? The grade grubber.
I wish the grade grubbers could be given their diploma on the first day of the semester and allowed to go home so the actual students can participate in education.
My own kids. I helped them explore the world and they naturally had an interest in learning. Grades…nah.
And, by the way, students interested in the world who end up with C’s are certainly preferable to those with A’s who have no interests but who plow through classes with the goal of A’s.
Also, students with C’s and particularly those whose parents can pay full price will still have their pick of some very good colleges and universities. Those whose parents can’t pay full price may end up having to start at a community college. But if they have their intellectual interests in tact (instead of tarnished by grade grubbing), they may find their passion in cc where they can focus on the interests that fuel their efforts–and they may end up being more accomplished than the A student who got A’s for the parents but who had no genuine interests. At some point the grade game ends. What then? The rest of the person’s life! Hopefully another 70 years of learning. If interest in the world was replaced by interest in grades…what happens when the game ends?
@OHMomof2 Well, since they were being so transparent about literally everything all weekend, I’d guess they would have mentioned it. Kids look pretty normal to me. Normal aimless slackers.
“Sorry I triggered any agnostic and atheist folks with the church going detail. I will make a mental note that it is a micro aggression to disclose a family attends church if they attend church.”
It’s just not relavent to the discussion about grades. It’s like stating they have suntans or drive BMWs.
I cannot like @T26E4 's post enough. Very, very well-said. I also want to echo that there are plenty of good, respectable, sold-citizen types who are not church (or temple or any other house of worship) attenders. And, there are wealthy, church going, lake house owning families with children who do not get all A’s and go on to respectable colleges. Lots of ways to make the world go round.
Children-whoever they may be-are not their grades and test scores. Some kids ARE slackers and take some time to mature. I have one of those. Others have a long-undiagnosed LD. My sister is one of THOSE. Others are bright but not getting the challenge or the type of education they need in a cookie cutter world. I know several of those. There is no one size fits all-there never has been.
Yes, of course, there are some people with low expectations for their kids. They might still be wonderful friends, or the ones who will be there for you in an emergency, the ones who help you move, etc. I try never to put people into one box over one part of their lives.
Oh give me a break. No one was triggered. Challenging or questioning a statement doesn’t equate to being traumatized.
Why does it seem that the people who whine the loudest about trigger warnings seem to be the ones with the thinnest skin?
The effect of grade inflation is that C is now looked as a D would have been in old fashioned times. Back then, a gentleman’s C grade was an acceptable grade.
And I thought I had seen some bizarre threads on here.
But not all schools have grade inflation, nor do some even HAVE a D grade. The district where my D attends school is standards-based and straight A’s would be very hard to come by. A student would need to have performed perfectly in every single standard for that class all year long. Also, there are no D’s. If you fail to meet enough standards for a subject, the grade below a C is an F.
When OP said the people were “church-going,” I took that to be a detail intended to suggest that there were likely to impose relatively strict standards on their kids. Still, it was the kind of detail guaranteed to get the sort of reaction it did. But OP is still a relatively new poster here.
What does it say about OP being friends with people who have slacker kids? Apples do not fall too far from the tree, or birds of a feather flock together.
-^ Yes, let’s blame the OP for even knowing parents of kids who get Cs. Another nutso twist in this thread.
“- nobody here really thinks Cs and layabout slacker kids is acceptable.”
I think Cs are acceptable depending upon the circumstances. And, I’d rather spend time with a person who got some C’s but who has genuine interests than someone who got A’s but had no intellectual interests but who grade grubbed their way through school. I think the circumstances are important. The use of the term “layabout” and “slacker”, which are being used as derogatory terms, implies that you think that the student is not working hard enough to suit your tastes. But some students get C’s because they struggle with certain topics. They may do very well in others. They may get C’s despite working hard. And they may get A’s in some topics.
One helpful thing to do, when you find that someone else’s ideas about raising children are contrary to ones own, is to avoid focusing on what others are doing.
C’s aren’t so bad if you don’t think they are so important. Many parents who over value grades also over value the importance of As and of Cs.
" Have to be honest, it makes me look at them a lot differently."
I’m sure they feel similarly towards you.
Of course, the valuation of grades comes from colleges to some extent. A high school record that is not all or almost all A grades means that the already low chance of admission to the elite colleges that many on these forums desire becomes infinitesmal (so the student may have to go to a SUNY or some such). Similarly, college student aspirants to medicine or law are highly incentivized by medical and law schools to chase A grades over risking their GPAs taking more challenging courses or those outside of their strong subjects.
I think to a degree children create their own expectations. My kids both surprised me. My wife and I were OK students, my wife being a stronger one than I. We did all the things we thought we should do while raising them. Reading to them, encouraging them to read, we listened to classical music (not because we thought it would make them smarter but because we liked classical music), etc. We never had the goal of making them great students, we just wanted them to have the opportunity to be the best they could be. They took it from there. I remember sitting down with my D13’s guidance counselor as she was signing up for her sophomore HS classes. Her GC asked her if she was going for Val. She said “no, I just want to take these courses”. We kept asking her if she really wanted to work that hard as we were looking at it from the perspective of a student from 30 years prior. Honors Pre Calc as a sophomore, we didn’t have anything close until our senior years! She said she did but if it got too difficult she would drop back. From there all we did was encourage.
I think for most parents it’s important to have realistic expectations and those will be guided by their children. I think it’s important to encourage, not push or be apathetic to things accomplished. The parents the OP was talking to probably were not dealing with just low expectations.
Why would you think that? OP didn’t say anything about confronting or criticizing these people (like you are doing, by the way, albeit anonymously).
I mean, I think the OP may well be mistaken about why these parents shrug off Cs–it’s more likely that they do this because they don’t really have any good alternative. But they might also have bad reasons.