Hardback
September 26, 2023
9781421447162
English
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$34.95 USD, £29.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

Report Cards

A Cultural History

The definitive history of the report card.

Report cards represent more than just an account of academic standing and attendance. The report card also serves as a tool of control and as a microcosm for the shifting power dynamics among teachers, parents, school administrators, and students. In Report Cards: A Cultural History, Wade H. Morris tells the story of American education by examining the history of this unique element of student life.

In the nearly two hundred-year evolution of the report card, this relic of academic bookkeeping reflected broader trends in the United States: the republican zealotry and religious fervor of the antebellum period, the failed promises of post-war Reconstruction for the formerly enslaved, the changing gender roles in newly urbanized cities, the overreach of the Progressive child-saving movement in the early twentieth century, and—by the 1930s—the increasing faith in an academic meritocracy. The use of report cards expanded with the growth of school bureaucracies, becoming a tool through which administrators could surveil both student activity and teachers. And by the late twentieth century, even the most radical stands against numerical reporting of children have had to compromise their ideals.

Morris traces the evolution of how teachers, students, parents, and administrators have historically responded to report cards. From a western New York classroom teacher in the 1830s and a Georgia student in the 1870s who was born enslaved, to a Colorado student incarcerated in the early 1900s and the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants applying to college in the 1930s, Report Cards describes how generations of people have struggled to maintain dignity within a system that reduces children to numbers on slips of paper.

About the Author

Wade H. Morris teaches history at United World College East Africa, an international high school in Moshi, Tanzania.

Endorsements

"Report Cards takes something seemingly small and uses it open up rich and important conversations about the historical role of schools in children's lives—as sites of monitoring and control, social mobility, and, of course, learning. Wade Morris gets an A+ for this lively and illuminating book."

- Benjamin Justice, Rutgers University, Past President, History of Education Society
Johns Hopkins University Press
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Hardback
September 26, 2023
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