The report card.
Nothing is more pregnant with the fears of childhood, more fraught with the angst of adolescence.
They aren t for teaching students, they are for sorting them. Then we stream them according to some scheme with labels such as General, Advanced and Gifted. It s a mechanical procedure, no different in principle from what food inspectors do when they label a bushel of apples Extra Fancy or stamp Grade A on a side of beef. The systematic grading of students is a relatively new phenomenon. According to Andr Gombay, professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, the practice began with the Jesuits in the early 17th century who decided that grading would inspire a healthy desire to compete.