Article September 9, 1972 Issue

Subject: Failing French

[Special to the Christian Science Sentinel]

The notice from the school arrived in the afternoon mail. She felt dismay and fury; she wanted to smash her son's record collection and hug him defensively at the same time. "Unless your son tutors intensively during spring holidays there is every indication he will fail French for the year."

Laziness, that's what it is. He won't apply himself, won't stick with it and memorize and there's no other way to get French. Memorize irregular verbs. Maybe my whole approach to him has been wrong, I probably haven't disciplined him. Fourteen and failing French! It's too many friends, and playing his music all the time; we don't make him study enough. Never have made him study really; but good grief, how do you make someone learn?

She mused while preparing dinner, and when the boy came home she poured out all the thoughts that had bubbled in her mind since the mail had come. The boy had nothing to say; silence was his only defense. Being honest, he inwardly agreed with all her reasoning. He didn't study enough, though he had tried. But it was a rough course: he had started the school late in the fall, and was always behind even with occasional help from his mother.

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