Grades don't count....

In this continuing story of my grandmother's childhood in her 17-page letter, she wrote of some incidents. Here's another one:

She mentioned in the letter that she felt she was not smart enough.

(I beg to differ. Actually, I think the reason of her self-esteem was that in those days she was not 'expected' to work upon finishing her education. Knowing this, she probably felt it was a bit waste of time and energy to do her assignments well. She possibly developed this "good enough" attitude. My mother went through this similar attitude growing up when only marriage and family was expected in the near future).

Near the end of my grandmother's third class, she received a report card stating her grades. To her disappointment, she was failing and would not go on to fourth class.

Nervously, she handed the report to her father for review. Usually, when seeing such report cards, he simply said to all the nine children, "You should try to do better." He did not sit down with any of them to help with their assignments as there were too many of them.

But this time, her father went to the school and talked to the principal.

When my grandmother attended her class in the next few days, she was taken aback from what her teacher said to the whole class.

Her teacher sarcastically stated that my grandmother had failed the class but she still will be going on to fourth class next year. It was simply because her father was RICH and he recently had donated a lot of money to the school.

My grandmother said she never felt so humiliated in her life.