I was reading the thread about the most memorable punishment you’ve ever had and someone mentioned that getting a suspension took days off your allowable missed and that your citizenship grade was lowered.
What in all that is creation is a citizenship grade? I’ve seen some people talk about it on other MB’s in passing, but generally as a class. This is apparently a States thing, but can someone explain to me what that is all about? Seriously it’s confusing me.
Is it something like ‘being a good school citizen’ whereby you follow the rules and never get in trouble? If not, what is it?
We used to be graded on citizenship in elementary school P.E., but I think they phased it out around the second grade or so and started grading us on actual athletic ability (grrr). As far as I can remember, “citizenship” was basically a euphemism for Not Hitting People.
I expect a citizenship class would be different – perhaps another name for government / civics – although come to think of it, I do like the idea of an entire course on Not Hitting People. Some children could use it.
We got graded on citizenship in elementary school. It was on the right side of the report card, and was graded differently. Left side of the report card was regular studies, like math, science, English, etc. Right side was for more abstract concepts, like citizenship, attendance, etc. Instead of an A-F scale, we were graded O (Outstanding), S (Satisfactory)…and some other stuff. I can’t remember, as it was now many years ago and besides, I was always a brilliantly well-behaved child. (Ha.)
I think at some high schools, kids have to volunteer a certain number of hours for a citizenship grade. My high school didn’t have this, so I’m not totally clear on the concept, if there’s a class that goes along with it or what.
I never had a citizenship class in my life, and I live in the States. I know some high schools (tend to be private, from my secondhand knowledge) do require x number of volunteer hours to graduate, but I don’t know if it gets graded.
I remember most of my gardes in Elementary being E(xcellent) S(atisfactory) etc etc…
I never remember getting anything like a citizenship grade. Though the past couple of years at school I managed to pick up ‘Leadership’ credits for being a part of the Student Advisory Team, Student Ambassadors, going to all those interesting talks that people hold to tell you about real life stuff like budgeting and student loans…
It was just totally confusing me… how can you fail citizenship unless you are a total jerkoff? Ah well. Thanks people.
Right… now I know why this thread had me so confused. You’re using ‘grade’ in the same way that I would use ‘mark’, to assign a rank of performance to a student (in this case, in a class about citizenship).
I thought you meant that, as a punishment, some students (landed immigrants, perhaps?) were having their ‘grade of citizenship’ reduced: in other words, their citizenship status was being changed by the government and some of the privileges they enjoyed as citizens were being removed.
I had to read this thread three times to make sense of it.
Ok I think I posted the confusing post in the other thread I live in the states… MA to be exact…
In junior high and high school (grades 7-12) we had what was called citizenship on our report cards. It wasn’t a class like english or math but it got a grade all the same (or mark or whatever you call it) It would have been better named conduct.
A meant no discipline problems
B meant you had a few demerits but not that many
C was cause for parental alarm
D usually included one suspension
F meant you did not get promoted to the next grade no matter how good all your other grades/marks were
This was the school’s way of holding the kids accountable for their behavior. I don’t know how effective it was.
Attendance was also very important and if you missed more than 10 days without a waiver (for something like chicken pox or the flu or a car accident) then you failed all your classes for the term. The school did not consider days missed for suspension as waivable so if you had more than 10 days of suspension you failed all your classes that term.
I’m sure this makes no sense so feel free to pick on me
No cause if we did that then we’d lose some points!
We did have a Citizenship class in 10th grade, I think, here in MD. It was a requirement to granulate HS, though it was done during social studies class. From what I remember we went over how the government worked from the state and federal levels, term limits etc. So some places do have a class on citizenship, I don’t ever remember having grades on how we treated others.
tanookie, you’re right–that’s one of the most unclear names that I’ve encountered, especially in an environment where the student would get a ‘civics’ class. Calling it a grade for ‘conduct’ or ‘behaviour’ would have been sooo much clearer.
We had a mark called ‘conduct’ in elementary school, which I think is the same thing as what’s referred to as Citizenship in other schools. However, we no longer got this mark once we were out of elementary school.
I live in the states… MA to be exact…