The Permanent Record

I recall in eleventh grade a friend of mine, who was intelligent but pretty careful to "have a facade that can be managed" as he put it, told me that if you played hooky for a day, it "went on your permanent record".

And I see that that record is also being played, as it were, in the US, and probably in all countries of the world.

But it's just a Boogyman for older kids, isn't it. If the schools really managed a big file of everything a kid does, I think we would have heard more about it now. (I was a member of an organization which did keep such files, and even for a well-behaved person, they grew fat quickly.)

Ah, I see that it's not just used against kids. Here's a nice article. And an article about the "record" becoming real on the Net.