My 8-year-old son Colter brought home his first F recently.
He received the grade on a social studies test after he couldn't rank land masses from largest to smallest (starting with the planet and ending with the city where we live).
There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for his F: He wasn't in class when the material was taught. Instead, he was in his gifted and speech classes. In spite of this reasonable explanation, I had what some might consider an unreasonable reaction: I felt like a failure.
The only F I received -- if you don't count almost flunking gym -- was given to me the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I received the failing grade in a required physics course I took when I mistakenly believed I wanted to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist.
The F was a lesson to me: Sheer willpower and simple smarts aren't always enough to succeed.
Colter's F brought that lesson home differently: Sheer willpower and simple smarts aren't always going to be enough for my son, either.
I also realized something else. My son may have failed that test, but his teachers failed him. They didn't help him learn the material, which is their job. They didn't alert us that he was missing critical classroom time and falling behind, which meant we couldn't do our job -- helping him catch up at home.
And I learned at my son's open house last week that the school system is failing third-grade kids in more profound ways. This year, for the first time, they are requiring teachers to pace the math curriculum more quickly than students can absorb. Why? They hope it will help improve standardized state test scores that determine whether schools and school systems are rewarded or punished for their performance.
While I was recovering from Colter's first F, other parents were calling his teacher constantly about math homework, complaining that their kids spend two hours a night working on problems with little progress; their kids come home crying, parents said. They felt stuck.
And they are. Students and parents are caught between schools that are setting the kids up for failure and teachers who want to help, but cannot.
One of Colter's best friends was a victim of this system. He repeated third grade once, then failed the standardized test again. Instead of keeping him in public school, his mother moved him to a private one that would provide him with the remedial help and moral support he needed.
As soon as I heard about Colter's F, I thought of this boy. I thought: Colter's going to fail the FCAT. He's going to fail third grade. He's going to fail life. Which means I fail.
It isn't that I believe grades are a measure of a person's worth. But they can be a measure of how diligent and studious a person is. They can also be a predictor of future success in academic and professional settings. Some of the hardest-working people I know were good students. But not necessarily some of the happiest.
I married a bad student and several members of my immediate family never enjoyed academic success. School just wasn't for them. But life was.
One of the ongoing downsides of academic overachievement can be the tremendous anxiety some adults still feel about missing or failing a test.
I don't want Colter to have this anxiety. And so far, he doesn't.
Colter was bothered by the F, but he was also motivated by it.
For a few days after he received it, when he argued with me about doing homework, I'd say, "Well, the alternative is to get a --" and he'd say, "DON"T REMIND ME!"
About a week later, I asked him how he was feeling about the F.
He said, "I feel bad about it because I can do better than that."
He's right. He can. And with that confidence and determination, I know he will, whatever his grades.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
