math: Satisfactory; fatness: Outstanding

[keryx]

We got these really odd grades in elementary school, basically words (ironically, as an adult, I get rather similar words at the office) like Outstanding or Satisfactory. I think an N was like a Really Bad Grade. Were notes from home, or the wrong kind of stickers and Really Bad Grades, as tragic & humiliating for other kids as they seemed to me?

Because if so, sending notes home about BMI is the stupidest idea ever [link is to the NYT article about it - good reading]. Even if we knew (which it seems we don't) fatness in kids to be a scourge of evilness, would we want to teach them to fear food and view exercise as a punishment?

Oh, right... that's not really any different than we do now. Which is, by the way, a big part of my issue with mainstream schooling - an awful lot of its techniques are fear-driven and mean. Which this BMI note thing fits right in with.

Comments

[steamedwords.livejournal.com]

Don't you know that people need to be humiliated and intimidated into doing what is "good" for them?

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I was going to try to humiliate you into always agreeing with me, but I couldn't think of anything mean enough to say. Sigh. Pretend I did it anyhow.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I only remember getting A through Fs. I really don't remember getting any other weird grades. Maybe there were words? I don't know. If I did get any bad grades, it didn't have much of an effect on me.

Things that I distinctly recall humiliating me when I was little (let's say 7 or younger):
1. Getting attention drawn to me
2. Being asked to interact with anyone I didn't already know
3. Talking or being spoken to
4. Being looked at

and so on...

[libskrat]

What boggles me about this is -- what fat kid doesn't already know they're fat? I mean, duh.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Well, actually... plenty of "fat" kids and their parents don't know they're fat. Because they're not really all that fat.

[ivyblogs.livejournal.com]

What business is it of the schools? They not only have your kid all day that also have to try and tell you what size they should be and what they should eat? I remember when they started doing that a few years back and there were parents really upset because their very athletic kids were getting notes sent home that their kid's BMI was too high (or however it works). They were saying, "My kid plays sports all the time and we don't feed him junk, and now I'm supposed to tell this really active kids to eat less?!" I remember one woman in particular, who said her son had started wearing baggy clothes to hide his body. Before the BMI letter he'd never thought about his weight. Isn't that sad? The thing is, BMI was created to measure adults- not kids. Kids naturally go through periods where they gain a lot of weight to get ready for future growth spurts. Quite a few of my son's friends got bigger from around 10 to 12 or 13. It was a good thing too because all of them- without exception- suddenly had a huge growth spurt around the time they began puberty. It's wrong to expect growing children maintain some average ideal weight all the time. But besides all that, they're overstepping. Next there'll be home visits to peek inside people's refrigerators.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the article lately about how PUBESCENT GIRLS ARE IN DANGER OF GETTING FATTER. Duh. That's kinda the defintion of puberty.

[scarletts-momma.livejournal.com]

When I was in school they tested my BMI every year. It was awful and I dreaded it. I especially fucking loathed the pinchers (that torture device they put on your thighs or arms to see how much fat you have). I would shake my head in disgust, hate the world/myself, and squirm away from answering any questions about my results with friends who weren't also fat. This only reinforced to me the disjointed eating patterns and body image my mother had already set up in my house. So for me, I couldn't escape it. My body got to be put on display as an example of why they tested or for my mother why I people obsessively diet.

[chubbyninja.livejournal.com]

hehe... im supposed to be 152-205 lbs according to the handy dandy BMI calculator.
sooooo close!

[keryx.livejournal.com]

If you weighed 150 lbs, you'd be a CREEPYninja. You're like 18 feet tall. You'd be the gumby of ninja.

[blucrowlaughing.livejournal.com]

notes home were the worst especially if they had to be signed and returned.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

You just brought on my PTSD.
Did you have to do the weigh-in in gym class every year? Where everyone lines up and steps on the scale and the gym teacher calls out your height and weight?
It was no big deal in elementary school - just boring. But *twitch* by sixth grade, I was a complete and total nervous wreck for the six weeks before Weigh Day. I had grown breasts and hips but hadn't grown in height yet and my waist hadn't done that hour-glass thing. So I was, by my 11-year-old standards, THE FATTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. And as Weigh Day got closer and closer, I stopped being able to sleep, stopped eating, started seriously considering suicide, running away, injuring myself -- anything to get out of having the gym teacher call out my weight to the class.
But, of course, he did. Probably no one noticed. In retrospect, they were probably all too busy hyperventillating about their own weight to pay any attention to anyone else's. But I do honestly still have nightmares about standing in that line, waiting for my turn. And after that, I stopped eating and started exercising obsessively. I grew a few inches and dropped a lot of weight so by seventh grade, I didn't fear the Weigh In and I talked my mom into letting me have a bikini.
Did I mention I still have nightmares?
*twitch*

[(Anonymous)]

"Oh, right... that's not really any different than we do now. Which is, by the way, a big part of my issue with mainstream schooling - an awful lot of its techniques are fear-driven and mean."

You are so right. That's why most people leave public schooling with some form of neurosis. It's also why the psychoanalytical pharmacutical companies are receving lots of money.

The schools seem to care about their image now, at the exclusion of caring to see that everyone gets a decent education. Part of that, is making sure that the students at their school "look" healthy. It seems more and more these days, schools are about teaching how to be a social monster, rather than about actually teaching education. You can't get an A, unless you're the thin little blonde with all the friends. That's the way it was at least in my school.