Description
Book SynopsisThe 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 postwar 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, andby the 1930sthe increasing faith in an academic meritocracy. The use of report cards expanded with the growth of school bu
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Civil War, Pandemic, and Report Cards
Chapter 1. Rousing the Attention of Parents
Chapter 2. Unity, Efficiency, and Freed People
Chapter 3. Overworn Mothers and Unfed Minds
Chapter 4. The Eye of the Juvenile Court
Chapter 5. Mobility, Anxiety, and Merit
Chapter 6. The Pursuit of Educational Dignity
Conclusion. Pulling Weeds and Foucault Fatigue
Appendix I. Depiction of African American Parents in American Missionary, 1867–1881
Appendix II. Ladies Home Journal and the Defense of Teachers
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
