School reports, hope for us all.

[FredPuli43]

"One of his pieces of prepared work scored 2 out of fifty", "His other work has been equally bad and several times he has been in trouble because he won't listen, but will insist on doing his work his own way" " i believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist...this is quite ridiculous" "If he can't learn simple Biological facts, he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist"

That's from a school report in Science. The pupil? John Gurdon, now Sir John, who has just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

What school report do you remember? Did it give a fair assessment of your work and prospects?

[mccfluff]

always

attention to detail and stop talking and distracting other pupils

[andy-hughes]

Wonderful - right up there with Einstein failing his eleven-plus.

One of my reports when i was ten said that i talked too much and was slow to grasp new ideas.

Both are still true, but neither has stood in my way too much!

[TOWIE]

Overall Report: Works Hard but talks too much.

Best Subject: English Lit and Composition
Worst Subject: Maths and Domestic Science (I accidentally set fire to the drying cabinet). {:o(

[ummmm]

I always had very good school reports. My mum always said that the teachers comments were more important than the grades.

[EvianBaby]

I found all of mine a couple of years ago and wished I hadn't.

They basically all said I wasn't very bright, or very good at much and although I was a nice child I didn't make friends easily and always clung to my one best friend (who was mentioned in every single report. We're still friends).

[jake-the-peg]

Sorry Andy

I think the Einstein bad at school one is an urban myth

http://en.wikipedia.o...h:_Einstein_at_school

[Prudie]

The worst was actually writing them and then trying to remember what you'd said come parents evening.

[Duncer]

"Could try harder" or "could do better" were fairly regular features in mine, not unfairly either.

[DTCwordfan]

I think mine featured "what a -anker"

Maybe they were true?

[parkie]

One of mine when I was 7 years old, and I still have it, says (for PE), "******* shrinks from physical exertion".
Nothing's changed.

[sherrardk]

Mine all said try harder. When I had to write school reports you weren't allowed to write anything negative, it was really hard to say much about some of the little 'darlings' I had the pleasure of teaching.

[craft1948]

I couldn't get my head round maths at school, I got a marvellous score of 17% in my 'O' level. The last 20 years of my working life relied totally on an aptitude for figures, which in a real life context I had no problem with.

[FredPuli43]

The real art in writing these is in suggesting, without saying it, what the teacher really thinks. The one which disturbed my own mother the most was the dry observation, about me, aged 10, "His sense of humour has appeared this term". And our own daughter was the subject, age 9, of the following "There were two ways of answering in my subject. There's the right answer and there's the wrong answer. There is now a third; Charlotte's answer".

[ummmm]

Lol Fred..

[Barmaid]

That's brilliant Fred.

I recently found a report from 1978 (I was 7) which basically said I was a nice girl, willing to please but talked too much and had an odd imagination!

[Barmaid]

Actually, I think that's pretty much what the judge said yesterday........

[dotty.]

i still have all my school reports from aged 7 to 16, all the ones from the grammar school say, 'dorothy fails to reach her potential' or 'dorothy could do really well if she applied herself' i still don't remember being that good.

[FredPuli43]

Yes, Barmaid, I was forgetting that judges , especially the highest, are good at this too. I have heard "Mr Puli, in his enthusiastic argument..." and once, in the Court of Appeal, "No, Mr Puli, there' no need for any apology, I assure you. We are sure that any offence was unintentional" And a colleague once heard this from a judge summing up to a jury "Mr Smith, in his spirited defence, in the finest traditions of the English bar...."which could only have meant "Don't listen to that con artist !"

And imagination in legal argument may be a good thing. It didn't do the future Lord Denning any harm !

[FredPuli43]

Just noticed: Gurdon's damning school report from his science master is dated as late as 1949. Only nine years later,in 1958, John Gurdon performed the experiment which led to his winning the Nobel Prize in the very subject, biology,in which his master said he'd never make a specialist, since he could not learn "basic facts" (The Prize was in Physiology and Medicine).

Still, the master was right about one thing, that the boy wouldn't listen and insisted on doing things his own way. That's the trouble with genius; it won't accept the accepted.