Report card
I just read my 7 year old son’s year 2 report. It’s an inspired concert of politically-correct technocratese. An exercise in encryption, except they forgot to provide me with the public key.
It’s like reading a weather report written by a committee terrified of rain.
So I pasted it into GPT and got it to translate it for me. Oh the irony – I used the word soup machine to decrypt actual word soup.
That’s peak modern education for you: a perfectly circular ecosystem of meaningless praise, converted back into meaning by the very technology it actively spurns.
For the record…
“Fine. Here’s the plain-spoken version without the sugar coating:
Your son is in Year 2 and doing very well. He’s near the top of the class in English, Maths, Science, Humanities, Music, and Technology. He understands what’s being taught and can apply it, not just repeat it.
He puts in solid effort across the board, doesn’t muck around, and gets his work done. Teachers like that.
He behaves well most of the time, listens, follows rules, and treats others decently. Fourteen days off this semester but all explained.
If there’s anything to improve, it’s teamwork. He’s better working on his own than in groups. Otherwise, the kid’s sharp, focused, and on track.”
To be honest I’d prefer my kid to be doing badly in this system.
To save time in the future I developed this GPT prompt to do the translation:
“Translate this Australian primary school report card into blunt plain English. Remove all educational jargon, ‘growth mindset’ language, and political correctness. Keep only what a parent would actually want to know: what the kid can do, what they struggle with, how they behave, and whether they’re trying. Use short, direct sentences. No praise inflation, no euphemisms, no ed-speak.”
offshore westerly 