Inspired by this post… I started thinking of an interaction I had with one of my students when I was teaching:
Sam: Hey Mr. Hollow, I’m getting a limo and a white tux for prom.
HH: You’re going to a prom?
Sam: Yeah, I gotta do it up right before I graduate.
HH: You’re going to pro… wait, did you say you were graduating?
Sam: June 4th! I won’t see a lot of these kids at the magnet high school I’m going to.
HH: [faints]
See, my school was a grade 1-8… an elementary/middle school. I thought Sam was going to a high school prom, and a high school kid invited him. Which was certainly interesting. But when Sam referred to the end-of-the-year dance as a prom, I was flummoxed. Because it isn’t. Prom is the last dance for the seniors who are graduating from high school (yeah, I know, juniors can go as well, etc. etc.). And being promoted from 8th grade to 9th isn’t graduating, either. You can only graduate from high school, college, grad school, charm school, and obedience school.
My aunt has a picture of my cousin at his kindergarten graduation. What the fuck…? If you want to have a ceremony promoting kids to first grade, cool. But if you put on a cap and gown and call it a graduation, you’ve crossed a line. My sister was motivated to finish high school for the sole reason that it would be the only time she’d get to wear a mortarboard and gown, take cool pictures, and walk across the stage. She’s not alone either. A lot of kids I knew were there just for that once-in-a-lifetime experience. And some people think it’s good to have multiple graduation ceremonies before you complete your education?
Just the idea that there are kids who have graduated from K, elementary, and middle schools pisses me off. Anyone else?
I completely agree. The accomplishment of a five year old in having “graduated” kindergarten does not need to be marked as a special occasion, much less one in which the kids are dressed up in wee caps and gowns and marched across the stage. High school graduation marks graduation not just from the four years of high school, but from a twelve year course of study. You are, at that point, “done” with school if you choose to be. Graduations for people who are simply moving up through the same school system are beyond stupid. I think it’s a symptom of the new mentality that every milestone must be an occasion and every accomplishment, no matter how small or routine, celebrated to the skies. I think kids raised with those expectation run the risk of growing up to believe they should be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.
I graduated from grade school, with a diploma and a ceremony that even then I thought was ridiculous enough to skip. This was more than 30 years ago.
My employer, a hospital, runs a Mother Baby Hour for new moms and their infants. The babies “graduate” at 9 months old and get a diploma. They can’t even talk yet, let alone read or write.
My school did a kindergarten graduation, a hold-over from when the school only taught pre-k and kindergarten. I was really too young to remember it, but later on, it was very disappointing to get no recognition at all as a leaving 6th grader while everyone cooed over the little ones. I’m the one that’s gone through this whole school people! I certainly didn’t want another graduation farce, but I mean we got NOTHING.
The only thing that matters is high school grad, if only for the simple fact that for a lot of people it is a real accomplishment.
Translating Australian to American, he means that in Australia they don’t have HS grad ceremonies, because the systems are quite different.
Here you can (and many do) quit school at year 10 and start an apprenticeship, and only go to year 12 if you want your HSC (higher school certificate). Your HSC is given based on test scores, and those test scores determine what university you can attend and what major you can pursue (er…that’s the very very simple version, whereupon you go off in to fee paying, not fee paying, John Howard, etc…). There’s nothing very special about leaving high school here, its just over and done and off to your apprenticeship in year 10 or off to uni if you got a good enough HSC score.
So it seems very strange to Australians that we have the full cap and gown ceremony, but that’s because it is a cultural miscommunication.
Er…Cunctator, now that I have been so presumptuous as to speak for you…sorry.
The only explanation that I found mildly satisfying –I remained unconvinced- was that you have a “graduation” ceremony when the kids are done with kindergarten to serve as a sort of bookend for when they finish with the real thing twelve years later.
While I suppose it might make for a nifty before-and-after shot, it seems to cheapen the actual ceremony if you’ve already been through it several times already.
Perhaps I’ve not understood what you were saying. I took your OP to mean that you didn’t have a problem with graduation ceremonies for the end of high school, but that you thought they were silly for anything lower than that in the educational food chain. I was merely saying that people’s standards differ. Here graduation is generally restricted only to universities. You don’t get a graduation ceremony when you finish high school.
Most of us would have gone through the event slackjawed because… heck, we’re like 12 years old… you’re cool for skipping your elementary grad ceremony.
There’s always a “high school graduation” song out every few years. Maybe it’s time for JoJo to put one out for the elementary/junior high set?
What really gets me going is that you can probably buy greeting cards for this… oh shit, it seems you can!
I grew up in the UK and I don’t recall any of my mates having an American-style graduation. Fair enough… but if you’re going to have a grad ceremony, I say do it at the end of your studies. I suppose the Australian version of this would be a grad ceremony at the end of your first year at university…
I had an elementary school graduation in 1969, and a junior high graduation in 1972, but they were fairly understated. There weren’t caps and gowns, and it wasn’t something we were urged to have excessive pride in. It was more a rite of passage than anything else.
What I think is getting silly is elementary school mascots. When the morning weather forecaster comes on and does the feature bit on his recent visit to a local school, they always mention the “10th Street (Elementary) School Panthers”, or “Bears”, or “Tigers”, or whatever. It’s just dumb. Do they field interscholastic teams and have a city championship?
Hey, don’t talk shit about the Oak Hill Elementary Phantoms, or there’ll be hell to pay!
I went to over a dozen schools, and Oak Hill had a mascot. The Phantom came out at Halloween, I think, and was on a mural in the school. We had jackets with the logo and you could buy pencils, etc. with the Phantom on it. No teams though.
We had elementary school sports teams. We’d play against other elementary schools. what’s wrong with that?
Anyway, my elementary school had a grad ceremony. I went, and I thought it was nice, because we were all splitting up and going to different high schools, so it was the last time I saw quite a few of my classmates. We didn’t have a prom - just a quick ceremony and then cake and stuff with parents and teachers in the gym.
I agree that kindergarten grads are just silly, though.
My kiddo had a preschool graduation…I was Ok with that because he was leaving pre-school and heading off to “real” school.
Then at the end of the next year he had a kindergarten graduation. I though this was stupid because he was going to be in the same school with all the same kids next year for first grade.
Eighth grade graduations are Ok, if the kids are going to a different school. But if you’re in a K-12, no point in graduating unless you’re leaving the school.
I don’t think I have a problem with wanting to mark these occasions. But they aren’t graduations, they’re promotions. Unless you’re in a small town, it’s unlikely that you’ll be in the same school from K-12. Most kids are going to go somewhere else for 9th grade and high school… again, a ceremony is fine, but it ain’t a graduation.
I have trouble accepting that this is an opinion and not a fact. I dislike these things for two major reasons: I think they’re a cynical manipulation of parents, and I think they are celebrating extremely minor accomplishments, which may be sending lousy messages to the kids.
To be really blunt about it, in most cases, finishing kindergarten or even sixth or eighth grade is the bare minimum. Maybe this is more true of the suburbs where I’ve spent most of my time; I don’t mean to overgeneralize. But basically those graduations are the very least you can do, and unless you have some kind of problem - be it physical or emotional or a learning disability and so on - you almost have to try NOT to pass. The kids deserve some congratulations from friends and family, absolutely, but why do they need a ceremony? Who decided they need public validation for even the most minor achievements? When it’s done repeatedly, as it is in this scholastic world, doesn’t that set them up to be continually needy?
I “graduated” from 6th grade. No cap-and-gowns, but suits and ties, and I got a “diploma.” This was in about 1962.
It’s just a black and white photo of this that my mother has, but if I were somehow able to post it here, I do believe that 75% of the viewers would read the expression on my face as…WTF is THIS??
I was only 12, but I thought it was bullshit even then.
AFAIK American high schools copied graduation ceremonies from colleges and universities. At my HS this included all the teachers/adminisrators where academic robes (complete with coloured hoods) and leading a procession of students. I don’t think it’s spread beyond Canada though.
When I got my PhD from Mickey D’s* we had a huge ceremony with everyone wearing hair nets, carrying jars of special sauce and everything!!!
*[sub]OK, I’m totally making this up[/sub]
I dislike these things for two major reasons: I think they’re a cynical manipulation of parents, and I think they are celebrating extremely minor accomplishments, which may be sending lousy messages to the kids.
