Back when every profession had a hat, the mortarboard was the hat of academia. The difference between the students and the instructors at any institution was the side on which the tassel was worn. Once you were graduated, you were qualified to teach, whether you took a teaching position or not, so you were entitled to wear the tassel on the “teaching” side.
My parents were both professors, and they usually had to go to the graduation ceremonies, in full academic regalia, with the odd-shaped mortarboard that the people with Ph.Ds wore, and belts, sashes, and other stuff that they had collected for being magna cum laude, or colors that indicated their field of study. I don’t really know. I didn’t go to my college graduation, I’ve never worked in academia, I never went past a BA, and I never had any special honors in high school or college. I’ll never forget them getting dressed in that stuff, though.
Other times they had to pull that stuff out was for the inauguration of a new president at the school, and once for a funeral of a former president.
We didn’t wear cap and gown in high school (that had to wait for a real graduation, not just finishing high school). In college nobody cared about tassel direction.
At the college where I work, we don’t exactly discourage it, but the tassel turning thing isn’t a formal part of the graduation ceremony. If people want to turn it, they can feel free. I’ve sometimes vaguely wondered if this was a bit of a ret-conned thing, does the tradition really go back that far?
I am with Bert Nobbins. I never heard of anything like “turning the tassel” in Britain. It is almost certainly an American invention.
And, of course, in Britain, you do not graduate from high school at all, just from university.
Well, I suppose that is just one more instance of the creeping Americanization of British culture. It is certainly not a deep rooted tradition in Britain.
Technically, the correct usage is “to be graduated from,” not “to graduate”; it’s the school that graduates you, not the other way around, but “he graduated high school” is so common, that high school English teachers use it.
I think what we call high school graduation, you call “matriculation.” Your school system is very different from ours.
We did the tassel-moving thing individually at my university graduation. In high school and junior college, I don’t recall any moving of tassels at all.
My high school made quite a big deal of it. All the teachers and admin who assisted in the ceremony were in whatever the graduation robe and morterboard for their most recent school and degree had been, with the principal and VP, who had Ph.Ds pretty decked out. One of the teachers had gone to a military academy, and had some ropes and insignia. I had to wear a gaudy purple thing, because we were in school colors. They had the juniors who were in the honors program assisting as ushers, and they were in white, with honors insignia of some kind, but there was a big fuss about their tassels-- making sure they didn’t flop onto the wrong side.
We also had a big lecture about the girls wearing dresses and skirts, the boys wearing ties, and no novelty ties, and not sneakers, blah, blah, no adornments that were not academic insignia, no earrings on boys, no earrings on girls longer than something. They were really kind of jerks about it, and there was a Lillian Gish movie playing on campus that I had wanted to see for years. I didn’t want to go to the ceremony. I ditched my robe and mortarboard, changed clothes in the bathroom, and grabbed my bike off my uncle’s car, and went off to the movie after. My mother rescued my robe, and still has it, I think. Also, my diploma.
My parents were pissed because “They came all the way from New York,” but I hadn’t asked them to, and they came by plane-- it was like a 90 minute flight.
No we don’t. We just call it leaving, or finishing with, school. There is no associated official ceremony or certification, and you are not considered to graduated or to be a graduate. You just go home at the end of term, and don’t go back. Any certificates or diplomas you may have obtained are associated with exams you have passed, not with the mere ending of your time in school.
I think “matriculation” is sometimes used to mean entering university, but it is not very commonly heard.