Graduation despair
Jane Czeszewski of Chicago whines "My daughter and her family have recently moved to Naperville. My granddaughter is in the eighth grade and is graduating, if you could call it that. There will be no cap and gowns for the graduates and not much of a ceremony either. All the raving about this area and they can't provide a little thing like this. The kids seem to be disappointed. I sure am. I just wish that when an area that is known to be so great that a little thing like a cap and gown wouldn't be a problem. They deserve to be recognized for an accomplishment well done. This is a shame. It seems that nobody cares. They just want to send them off to the next level. In my opinion , they need to be rewarded to the highest extreme at this age."
Oh my God, the poor little kids living in a wealthy suburb may not get a cap and gown for DOING WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES. Oh the humanity! Jane, think about the kids in impoverished Illinois, both rural and urban, where schools struggle to get by on the bare minimum. Remember that you are asking THE TAXPAYERS to pay for your little party. Jane Czeszewski of Chicago, all I have to say is...
of you have sat, and perhaps thought, with us!
3 comments:
Couldn't agree more. I grew up elsewhere and was amazed that schools in the Chicago area held cap and gown graduation ceremonies just for making it to grade 9. What else could they do? The only real option to going to grade 9 is juvenile detention.
Spoiled brats.
And what's with the "Chicken" dance? Nobody outside the upper mid-West has heard of the chicken dance. Is this some attempt at proving heterosexuals (wedding reception) can dance to stupid music just like the Village People? Maybe that's the most complex dance move they can manage.
And where's my corner?
I have any number of problems with grade school "graduation" ceremonies. Of course the obvious has been covered - only the most incorrigible or abused child doesn't get promoted to 9th grade in Illinois. Beyond that, there is a strange and highly frightening trend toward glamorizing the entire "graduation" experience. I'm talking about a dozen long stem roses for the girls, limosines to transport 14 year olds from a school to a banquet hall for a $17.00/plate "luncheon." And it gets more twisted from there:
Formal dances with several boys in rented tuxedos and lots of girls wearing $200 prom-style dresses. After parties in rented HOTEL suites!!
Affluent suburb? Nope - innercity Chicago grade school (remaining nameless, but not my current teaching assignment). The reasoning: For several of the students this "graduation" is the ONLY one that they will ever experience, so their families want to make it memorable.
I just received notice that my SIX YEAR OLD needs to get ready for his KINDERGARTEN GRADUATION PICTURES. I politely wrote back that I was not being sucked into their everyone-gets-a-diploma-and-a-trophy vortex. If this was a problem, then I'd take him to a baseball game that day instead...
Enough with this ENTITLEMENT mentality. Earn something and then we'll talk REWARD!!
Yeah, in a lot of places, getting through 12th grade is still essentially a prize for playing the game long enough, but it's still a long-standing tradition that completing high school has a ceremony like that. We had 8th grade "graduation" ceremonies, but they were way scaled-down versions of what they are now, it sounds like.
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