Plenty of commencement ceremonies happened at high schools this past week. It’s not like it used to be, when high school graduation meant something. Now little children graduate from day care, kindergarten, elementary or middle school. Completing life as a high school senior is about as exciting as a glass of iced tea with melted cubes; you probably already had a sip or two, and the rest is just flat and doesn’t really matter.
I don’t know to what standards schools hold their graduating seniors these days, but at work they have a hard time finding people who can do tasks which were minimally basic ten years ago. The job market is hurting for qualified people, and I just read a survey in USA Today indicating that many graduates from college are working at jobs which don’t require the degree they received.
So a cap and gown is no longer a badge of honor, a degree has been downgraded to an expensive piece of paper, and for those students with time to go before they graduate, they have all summer to forget everything.
I’m a proponent of all-year school with increased breaks and a tiered summer vacation system to allow the older students time to get jobs and keep the younger ones absorbing as much as they can while their brains are ready to receive it.
I also find some of the graduation stuff a bit degrading. A class ring that nobody wears, a yearbook that doesn’t show how students really are, a ranking system that is never accurate, and all for some short-sighted bragging for a few hours, often followed by over-eating and drinking and moving away to new places and forgetting what you had just done for the past thirteen years.
When I graduated, I started a job the next day, and I’ve been working ever since. The yearbook is a bit dusty, the diploma is locked away and replaced by new ones. Next year is another reunion year, and it seems most of us are not in touch anymore. But the ritual of it all goes on annually. Life should mean more than this.
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