Third Grade Summer Book Report Form: Fill & Download for Free

"Our education system is just about mugging up and vomiting in exams. Only marks matter. Nothing else!! Just adding more rats to the rat race” screamed Amit in anger!“No attention to individual likings, interests, passions. Just a mass assembly line! Everybody just runs behind money and status and ends up in mid-life depression by the time they have completed quarter life! Nobody teaches values, kindness, character - what it is to be a good human being! God knows when the system will change!" he said looking at the newspaper headline that said "80% of Engineers are unemployable".His morning coffee had just turned a lot more bitter. "Why cant she make a even a decent cup of coffee?!!" he thought angrily, and just opened his lips to call his wife..."Mummy!!! Papa wants more sugar in his coffee!" exclaimed his 6 year old son, Rishabh.Rishabh was his darling son. He was so perceptive - he could almost read his mind. It was so sweet when he guessed what his father was thinking. He looked all the more cute, when he would scream at his mom for not doing her job properly ... and imitated his yelling. Disha, his wife, found it cute too.He looked all the more cute, when he would scream at his mom for not doing her job properly ... and imitated his Dad's yelling."He is going to turn into a strong young man. Not the pansies like we see today" he thought happily.His son was already learning.---------------"Papa - look at my drawing!!" exclaimed Rishabh. He had just celebrated his 8th birthday. He was in third grade.Amit muttered some words of encouragement and asked "...How was your math exam?"Rishabh was a little scared. Amit knew. "Disha!!! Did you have a look at his report card??!! Or do I have to do everything??!!! Can't a man have some minutes of peace?"He did not realize it. But his son was learning.Can't a man have some minutes of peace?"Disha came out of the kitchen and tried cooling Amit down "Calm down. It's fine! He is in third grade for God's sake! The last thing you want is he starts lying to us about his marks"Rishabh was still trembling. Amit now turned his anger at Disha "You think I am that kind of father? I am not expecting miracles. We enrolled him in that bloody edutech class too. They exploit parents and suck them dry!”Disha added “I know. But Sharmaji was saying that coding is what the future is about. I was thinking whether we should enroll him for that White Cap coding class?”“But Disha, does he really need another class?” asked Amit.“NO, NO!! I DON’T” Rishabh was screaming in his mind, hoping that his parents would hear. By some miracle, his father had paused to think about his own needs. Maybe he was wrong to think that they did not think about him at all“…they really charge a bomb! I will have to sell a kidney! What are you really suggesting?”This was a really important learning moment for Rishabh - as he observed how his parents made important decisions.“I have no clue whether he needs it”, Disha admitted. But if everybody is doing it, it must be good? Plus coding is of course in high market demand. We don’t want to regret years later that we did not enroll him to save some money, right?”“Yeah, better not think too much. Let’s just pay up. Rather than feel guilty later. Why take the risk?” Amit agreed. The decision was made.Rishabh was learning.Amit was naturally feeling nervous at his big guilt-driven decision. It was a huge sum of money. His nervousness always made him come into ‘responsible’ mode where he looked at Disha in the eye and strictly said“Promise me you will take responsibility that he will attend the class and really do justice to it. I don’t want to spend this kind of money for nothing. He is small. He wont understand - what a hard, competitive world it is out there. Even 90% doesn't work. We have to push him, even if he hates us for it"He wont understand - what a hard, competitive world it is out there. Even 90% doesn't work.His son was learning.With some of the nervousness dumped on to his wife, Amit felt lighter. He looked at Rishabh with a smile. “What are you staring it young man??!! Smile!!! Do you see how much Daddy, Mommy love you!!???”Rishabh was not really sure. But he was learning. About love, about decisions, about values used to make those decisions.-----------------Rishabh was in 5th standard. He scored lowest in Math..as usual.He enjoyed dance though. Disha said "Shall we enroll him in a dance class? YCD seems to be the best. The kids make it to some or the other reality show every year. 2 kids even made it to the finals of Dance India Dance!""Sure!" Amit said. "I never got to do what I loved. But my son will!" Rishabh was happy!3 months later...he was not selected in the audition of the reality show. He knew mom would never scream at him - but she was embarrassed. Especially because her friend Pammi aunty's son had made it through."Don't look sad son! Be a man! Only pansies cry!"More learning.The learning continued..."Whatever we do we have to the best at it. If that dumb kid can do it, why can't you? Hard work is the key to any success. No pain, no gain""Whatever we do, we have to the best at it. No pain, no gain"He was learning. And for a change he agreed this time!! Dancing was indeed seeming like a pain since last few weeks. He was almost starting to hate it!But maybe pain is proof of real hard work. If you enjoyed something, you are not really trying hard enough. Maybe life was supposed to be torturous, empty, meaningless. It was not some Bollywood movie after all!If you enjoyed something, you are not really trying hard enough. Maybe life was supposed to be torturous, empty, meaningless.3 more months later, he stopped dancing.The nail in the coffin was a calm statement by Amit. "Son, I cannot really do anything. I never forced you to join the class. You wanted to. I never said anything when you could not even make it to the first round of the audition. What's the use of learning then?.."Dad was right. If I cannot excel, what is the use of learning? But then what was the use of learning math? He never excelled at it? But better shut up.If I cannot excel, what is the use of learning?Rishabh felt like crying. But enough humiliation for today he thought. The last thing he wanted was to be called a 'pansy'.-----------------------"Son, recite the shlokas from chapter 4 for Uncle!" summoned Amit.Rishabh was a 15 year old teenager now. He obediently recited the shlokas, with perfect pronunciation. Of course, he had no clue what they meant. Nobody in his class did.But wait, actually they did.They had passed exams for each chapter and even obtained certificates! The exams had questions about the meaning of each shloka, and he had written down whatever he had by-hearted. So technically, he knew the meaning ... but he felt like he did not. But the certificates indicated the opposite. Maybe that is what understanding felt like.But maybe all that did not matter. Because his dad was already doing what he always longed for..."Academics and all is fine. But our culture is paramount. You know he scored 99% in his exams? Did not even score so high in his school subjects. We have a guru in our house!"Though the recitation felt really embarrassing, it was worth it. Because every time his Dad praised him in front of others - Rishabh felt whole. Accepted. Acknowledged. To hell with understanding, meaning and other things. You had to understand what the world demands - not be some idealistic fool.This approach had really worked for him. He had left dancing. And singing. And yeah, dramatics too. But he had learnt slowly but surely that his dad wanted the best for him all along.His coaching classes had a laser focus. Marks at any cost. Tips, techniques, shortcuts. They even used something called "Predictive analytics" to predict what would be the exam questions this time.His poor teacher in school brought all these home made models to teach. "Concepts are important" she used to always say. But he had already scored full marks in that chapter in the summer vacation coaching class exams! What would he do with the concepts?He had already scored full marks in that chapter in the summer vacation coaching class exams! What would he do with the concepts?Again thanks to the support of his mom and dad - 10th standard was a breeze.----------------------"Congrats Mr. Rishabh, we are happy to offer you a job in our investment bank!"Rishabh's dream had finally come true. He had gotten the highest paid job on campus. At a top investment bank. His engineering degree had paid off!Memories of his first day at this college came to mind. He had no clue about the stream, the subjects, whether he liked them or not. But he was so happy and proud to get in! This college had the highest placement record and the highest package offered in the entire country!He had no clue about the stream, the subjects, whether he liked them or not. But he was so happy and proud to get in!He had access to the same books, same labs that any elite institutions abroad had. The professors in his college had authored books themselves. But he had already learnt that smart work mattered more than hard work.Those last minute assignment copying, those photo copy machine fumes, studying the night before the exams...everything was finally worth it! He had formed many close friends during all the slogging in engineering.------------------It was Happy Fridays at their favorite pub. Rishabh and team were celebrating after a huge deal. The expensive drinks and the envious gazes from the people around helped drown the emptiness he felt.Somebody pointed out a news headline. Rishabh could not control himself, as he poured his heart out..."Our education system is just about mugging up and vomiting in exams. Only marks matter. Nothing else. Just adding more rats to the rat race. No attention to individual likings, interests, passions. Just a mass assembly line! Everybody just runs behind money and status and ends up in mid-life depression by the time they have completed quarter life! Nobody teaches values, kindness, character - what it is to be a good human being! God knows when the system will change!"

I was born at the tail end of the Baby Boom (early-mid 1960s). First of all, my parents basically contacted every hospital within a 30-mile radius until they found that one which would allow my father to be present for my birth. It was all but unheard of back then for men to be present for the birth of their children. They were consigned to a waiting area outside the delivery room.It is true that they had been trying specifically for a girl, because my mother had spent her childhood caring for four younger brothers and had had enough of boys. Nevertheless, my parents proceeded to raise me in a gender-free household. I am 100% confident that they would have raised me exactly the same way and had exactly the same expectations of me if I had been born with different plumbing.When I was young, my mother was a stay-at-home mom - not entirely voluntarily, as she had had trouble finding a job after finishing graduate school, which was part of the reason they decided to have a baby at that particular moment in time. That said, my father believed that it was his obligation as a husband and father to spend the same amount of time as his wife taking care of the house and the baby. And he did in fact do this, taking over those responsibilities in the evenings and on weekends.That said, he did have a full-time job as a professor. And my mother certainly did not waste time beginning my education while he was at work. I had already been listening to classical music since before I was born (my mother being an opera fiend). She began teaching me to read at age 11 months, starting with my baby food jars. I was sitting quietly through an evening at the opera by age 3. I knew exactly how babies were made by age 5 - complete with proper medical terminology and pictures drawn on yellow legal paper.Unfortunately, they divorced when I was 4. Finances became very tight after a couple of years. Furthermore, my father had managed to remarry in the meantime, while my mother had not. She decided that given the financial situation and the fact that I would thereby have the opportunity to grow up in a two-parent household, it was better that I go live with my dad and my stepmother. Which I did halfway through first grade. This was a very unorthodox situation in those days, and my mother caught a lot of flack for making that decision, including slanderous accusations concerning her personal morality.My father would come down from work on his bicycle to pick me up after school, and I would come back and hang around in his office, talk to the students in his lab, his secretary, sometimes other professors. Around 5 PM, we would take our places beneath the window in his office and wait to hear the horn of my stepmother’s blue VW Bug arriving from her workplace outside the city - the signal to come downstairs for our ride home.They did everything together - cooking (mostly exotic foreign food - to this day such things as the Thanksgiving turkey, together with a delicious gravy, are my father’s bailiwick; his other signature dishes include Caesar salad, and cheese omelettes miraculously folded in thirds like crêpes), as well as cleaning… The only evidence of gender in our household was that my stepmother and I wore dresses (and in her case, even earrings and makeup) from time to time, and my father didn’t. I was not permitted to have baby dolls or read fairy tales. Only carefully-vetted materials that presented properly egalitarian sex roles, such as Madeline.We moved in the summer before third grade. At age 8, I took up the violin. A lot changed in our household after that, starting with the music we listened to. It took a quite drastic turn in the direction of classical (my father and stepmother having previously been sort of ‘academic hippie types’ who listened to Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and even had some Greek folk music that I used to dance to in the living room).They began accumulating a quite impressive collection of recordings, all carefully arranged by the composer’s birth date. As soon as finances permitted, they upgraded their stereo system. Over time, they became interested in theater and opera, taking vacations further afield than Canada…When I was 10, I stumbled across a vocabulary book intended for adults somewhere on a bookshelf in the living room, and proceeded to devour it. By the time I was done, I was speaking with a college graduate’s vocabulary, thereby making my own positive contribution to the tone of conversation at the dinner table.Thanks to having read this book in my youth, I basically never had to look anything up in the dictionary, for example, while reading material for homework at school. I also managed to get exempted from spelling the next year (sixth grade). That year, I had to write book reports. I chose such items as an 8th-grade science textbook I’d gotten at some flea market and a college music textbook.We didn’t get a TV until I was 11. Grandma bought herself a color TV and ‘bequeathed’ her big old black-and-white to us. I was only permitted to watch two hours weekly of carefully curated programs - as I recall, I was allowed to choose among such programs as Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (I was also allowed to read books from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series).On the other hand, I was not permitted to watch network news on TV, even if required to do so at school. That did indeed happen once, and my parents responded by setting me an alternate assignment that met their standards and seemed as close as possible to what the teacher wanted. I was supposed to take notes on a news program, to be discussed during class the next day. So I took notes on an approved public radio program. Alas, it was not a close enough fit, and the teacher had to quietly abandon her lesson plan at five minutes’ notice…I never heard such things as ‘you can never win a fight with a boy, he’ll be too strong’. So when I was gearing up to go to junior prom, my stepmother decided to talk about ground rules one night in the kitchen as she was making dinner. It went more or less as follows:Mom: So… you are going to be in a group of people the entire evening, right?I: Mom, I’m a good girl, I don’t do such things!Mom: And what if he isn’t a good boy?I: If he isn’t a good boy, I’ll give him a spanking!Her only response to that was to raise her eyebrow and say, ‘OK…’ Now mind you, I did have the luxury of being 5′11″ and in very good shape (and then there was the question of what I had between my ears…). The fact remains, however: That. Was. It.I also never heard anything along the lines of ‘you can’t do this because you’re a girl’ or ‘you have to do that because you’re a girl’. Quite the contrary: I was taught that ‘everyone is doing it’ is never a good reason to do anything. I was not gender-conforming, and my parents were happy about that. That is one reason it took me as long as it did to figure out that I am transsexual.As I moved into my teenage years, things became very difficult at home. Perhaps the conflicts would have been even worse if I had not become a Christian at just shy of 16. My having done so made it at least more likely than it might otherwise have been that I would try for a peaceful solution first.But the fact remains: most people do not change their religious status at all over their lifetime, much less while still living at home with their parents. And my parents had raised me in an agnostic/atheist environment. So they were not particularly pleased when I chose a religion for myself, but they did not try to prevent me from practicing my religion.Even so, there were constant arguments (and Dad admitted many years later that more often than not, I was right). Sometimes the conflicts were truly horrific. Dad sums up that time as follows: ‘I guess that was the price I paid for raising you to be strong and independent.’ And indeed, once I went away to college, apparently my parents got in the habit of bragging to their friends along the lines of, ‘She’s so independent, we never have to worry about her!’PS Just in case: Back when I was growing up, none of us knew that I was not only gender non-conforming, but actually transsexual, but I have since begun living openly as a man.Another thing: my folks did not really discuss drugs with me in any detail. It wasn’t a taboo subject though. I was aware that my stepmother was teaching a mini-course on the subject during winter break at her university, and that that green book on the living room coffee table was the textbook for said course.In due time, I had a look at it, thereby gaining valuable information about the risks of substance use which helped me to avoid addiction, as it enabled me to be aware that due to such things as tendencies towards depression and social awkwardness that plagued me in my teenage years, I was in a high risk category for developing addictions.I remember being in Germany not too long after that. I was 16 - legally old enough to drink there. And one night, I was deciding whether to have a glass of wine with dinner. Taking cognizance of my condition of feeling down and socially awkward, I decided not to do it - and promised myself that from then on, I would only ever drink if I already felt happy and comfortable.And indeed: none of us knew it at the time, but years later, it would turn out that each of my biological parents had a close family member who suffered from alcoholism. In other words, I probably have a genetic predisposition to addiction, so it was an absolute godsend that I had this info and was able to make the decisions I did early in life.And yet another thing: no doubt it is no surprise, given my parents’ views on gender, that they were also very laid back about homosexuality, but I have recently read a book that made me aware of just how unconventional my parents’ views really were. Back when I was a teenager, it was not unknown for kids to be sent to mental hospitals for ‘treatment’ if they were gay or transgender.I meanwhile not only had no idea that this was the case, but was raised in an environment so open that while I was aware that there was such a thing as ‘coming out of the closet’, as far as my life was concerned, it was a total non-concept. If I tell someone that I am trans or gay (I am in fact both), it does not constitute coming out of the closet, because I was never in the closet to begin with. There was literally no closet for me to come out of.I recall recently visiting a restaurant whose owner I have known for some years, but whom I had not seen since before my transition. So there was a need to explain why I was now walking walking around in men’s clothing and, once I had explained that, why I am not in the market for a girlfriend.After finishing that discussion, I found myself asking, ‘Did I really just announce to the general public in the middle of a restaurant [in a conservative Catholic country, no less] that I am not only transsexual, but also gay?’ And indeed I had - as calmly as if I were talking about the weather.PPS It seems the question has changed a bit since I answered it. So, let me take the opportunity to tie up some loose ends. As I have mentioned before, my parents were in general very careful to model the lifestyle they wanted me to live.This also included speech. So, they never spoke baby talk to me. Only normal adult speech at all times. As I got older, I was discouraged from the colloquial grammatical errors and usages common among the youth of my time.My parents were also very careful to avoid using naughty words around me. Not that I was necessarily punished if I used them - except maybe if I used them as alternative forms of address to my parents during a heated argument or something :P - but there was very clear modeling of a different mode of speech that did not include them.However, the fact that we had heated arguments at all was something of a departure from this. They were in principle pacifists. Had I been assigned male at birth, I would have been perhaps even expected to declare myself a conscientious objector when the time came to deal with draft registration.But they were only human, so… they never did find an ideal way to model a mode of discussion that did not include any heated elements. Nor, for that matter, did I. And I definitely saw the disconnect between what they were saying and what they were actually doing. At any rate, this kind of conflict (at the dinner table, no less) meant that my childhood was much more difficult than it might otherwise have been, than it might have appeared to the outside observer.At a certain point, I was put in group therapy. That is a story in itself. In a nutshell, I had been in individual therapy for some years for reasons that were not explained to me. This fact was not shared with the authorities at my school. I gather my parents were afraid it might cause me to become the object of discrimination.Many years later, I realized that neither my parents nor my therapist knew exactly what was wrong with me. And they couldn’t. No one really knew what Asperger’s syndrome was back then. And I was not in need of sufficient assistance to be diagnosed with full-blown autism.At a certain point, it seemed that the therapy was not helping, and the therapist finally realized there was nothing more to be done. By that time, I had been trying to tell my parents this for over two years, but never mind. At any rate, the therapist recommended psychological testing, and on that basis, referred me for this group therapy. End of digression.So, I was rather shocked to discover that one of the boys there felt that his greatest problem was that he was… too religious. And here I had just recently chosen that religion for myself. And then one day, one of the girls asked, ‘What are you doing here? You don’t smoke, drink, do drugs or party. You’re not having sex, you’re not pregnant. You’re doing well in school. So what’s the deal?’I went home and told my parents I would not go to that group anymore, as I did not feel welcome after hearing something like that. That said, I didn’t really even know how to answer her question. The fact was that I was depressed. Evidently living a clean life and having the kind of opportunities I had is not enough to guarantee happiness…

In this time of Corona virus, stores and restaurants are failing at unprecedented rates. Are you busying yourself making lots of purchases to help them stay afloat and tipping the wait staff handsomely to help make up for their lost income? If you want businesses to “smile” on your circumstances, shouldn’t you be doing the same?The actual arguments against a minimum wage have nothing to do with how much you get paid. I seriously lament the loss of casual jobs for the last couple of generations. It’s costing you more than you can possibly know.The summer I turned 12 and again the next year, I was paid 25 cents an hour at a clinical laboratory to wash slides, test tubes and other glassware. It was 200 miles from home; I was on my own. The washing took no more than an hour a day; the rest of the day I spent with the lab director. First, he taught me to do urinalyses, then serologies for venereal disease, the pregnancy tests and blood counts. The next summer, I was making reagents, using the mass spectrometer, even drawing blood from the lab director for blood cultures. I learned more science those two summers than high school and college put together. And no one thought anything amiss seeing a 7th-grader in the lab… we all had student jobs back then.Starting into 8th grade after my second summer in the lab, I heard the one theater in town needed a projectionist. I asked for the job and got it… 25 cents a showing. I learned on The Bridge over the River Kwai, a nine-reeler, so that worked out to 25 cents for three hours. But I kept the job for three years (until the theater burned down), and when I got to college, at only 18, I got the plum position as manager of the theater across the street from campus based on that experience.At college, I immediately volunteered for the student humor magazine and as an editor/editorial writer for the student newspaper… positions that paid nothing, but I learned everything about publishing. When it came time to get my first real job, there was a managing editor position for the American Anthropological Association. There were a lot of candidates, and I believe I was the youngest. But I was also the only one who knew how to resize photos, mark up copy and so on. The woman I was replacing had no time to wait around and train a replacement, so… “you’ve got the job.”One school year, the Student Publications office let me have the photo engraver position… $5/night flat rate. Usually, it was about 6:30 to 9:30, sometimes less, but then sometimes I’d be there until 1:00 in the morning when the paper was waiting for an important photo to come in. The deal was, slap a photo on the engraver and I had 20 minutes or a half hour to do my homework. I had my best grades those two semesters, but I also developed some good study habits I didn’t have before.The list goes on, but this was commonplace in my day. When the kids in my generation went out looking for their first “real” job, we’d already had a dozen. That makes a big difference to an employer—they know all the little details, from dress and decorum to punctuality to interfacing with customers, will have been absorbed.To ask for a job was to get one… good public relations in small towns all across America. I recreated this experience for my sons in the 90s, but it was a whole different ballgame. Potential employers were worried about child labor laws and wage laws and accounting. I finally resorted to saying, “Look, he’s just a free intern. I’ll send you money to cover your expenses and to pay him with as though it’s coming from you.”Minimum wage and child labor laws have had chilling effect at the low end of the job spectrum—starter jobs. Gone are the casual jobs, gone are the learn-on-the-job jobs, gone are the goof jobs where you could read a book or do your homework, gone are jobs for kids (how many Karens today would report a 12 y/o working in a clinical lab?)With the government a third party to any hiring deal and forms to be filled out and submitted, easy-breezy is over. More importantly, so is freedom of contract. And you are delusional, young job-seeker, if you think politicians have your back. Back in the Progressive Era, minimum wage laws were passed for one reason only—to stop minorities from being able to take “white jobs.” Fortunately, the Supreme Court back then still followed the Constitution and threw such laws out as discriminatory.How are you being discriminated against? Minimum wage laws are popular with, #1, unions, whose low-end workers are thus protected against competitive pay pressure in the market and whose pay scales are contractually linked to minimum wage, meaning a raise for all their members. And #2—the same minimum wage that’s a killer for mom and pop businesses is negligible for larger companies, who hire very few starter workers in the first place. Big unions… big corporations… big political donors!Do you see where you fit in the picture now?