Jun 01 2007
High Schools impose Graduation idiocy and teach kids the wrong lesson
Graduations are supposed to be a happy occasion. For High school kids it is the culmination of 13 years of public education, and a symbolic transition to adulthood.
As such you would think we would be ready to teach them the right lessons. Like being responsible for your own actions for one.
But no. The recent spat of schools imposing strange restrictions on students and parents at graduations makes me wonder what has happened to common sense.
Take this one for example:
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=6594996&nav=1sW7
Some Galesburg High students and their parents are planning to meet with District 205 leaders late Thursday afternoon. That’s after their diplomas were withheld following outbursts in the audience during Sunday’s ceremony.
For Amanda Kelley, 18, graduating from Galesburg High is a family milestone.
“Her mom didn’t get to graduate, so she wanted to make sure she did,” said Carl Kelley, her uncle. “She wanted to prove to other friends and family that she could do that.”
But observers reported an audience outburst as she crossed the stage.
“Someone yelled,” Carl said. “She didn’t get her diploma because of that.”
“People are going to be happy and cheer for you,” Amanda said. “You only get to walk across the stage once.”
Since when is it bad to be proud? Since when do we sanction punishing the kids for the actions of their parents? This is outrageous and it gets worse.
The Galesburg students singled out after the ceremony can still get their diplomas by working a day of community service at the school.
What crap. Someone needs to lawyer up.
“I’m not doing it,” said honor student Caisha Gayles. “I think it’s dumb. You’re punishing me because of what somebody else did. I don’t think it’s fair.”
“If I were that student, it would send a very negative message to me,” said Jerry Jones, executive director of the Martin Luther King Community Center in Rock Island.
No kidding. And it raises a side issue, if the student has met the requirements of the school, the diploma should be theirs no matter what.
Another school had all 200 student’s diplomas withheld after someone committed a serious breach of behavior. They had a …. its hard to say it …
A Beach ball.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local
/05/31/31dsgraduation.htmlA handful of Dripping Springs High School seniors will be called back into the principal’s office for cheering and bouncing beach balls above their heads during their graduation ceremony Friday at the Shoreline Center in Austin.
Their behavior, said Principal Greg Jung, was unacceptable.
Jung held on to diplomas for the entire 200-student graduating class for two days while district staff reviewed video of the ceremony in an effort to identify the pranksters. Jung said he expected to release diplomas for students not involved today or Friday.
“They were specifically told about their behavior. They were told what the expectations were,” Jung said. “This is no different than any other year.”
Once the offenders have been identified, Jung said, he will meet with the students and their parents this month to “let them help me determine how to resolve the situation.” Jung hopes the students can come up with a way to make things right, perhaps through a community service project.
Again, this is dramatic overkill. I think in their desire to be stern and somber they forgot that in the minds of the kids, this is their day of emancipation. They want fun and celebration and laughter.
And I don’t blame them.
Granted I don’t advocate allowing the ceremony to deteriorate into a drunken free for all. Some reasonable restraint should be maintained.
Sure, teach the kids responsibility and to take their behavior seriously, but for crying out loud people, get the sticks out of your asses.
This is the kid’s day. Let’s hear the cheers and shouting.
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8 Responses to “High Schools impose Graduation idiocy and teach kids the wrong lesson”
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This.. is just ridiculous. Astounding. Disgusting.
After thirteen years of school, of pursueing near impossible studies, bad teachers, peer pressure, bullies, struggling to fit in, and sometimes, basically hell, graduation should be something joyous.
A walk across the stage, people should cheer for you. You’ve made it that far, against so many troubles. You’ve done what still many couldn’t.
And to withhold the degrees because people want to make it joyous? Fun? Something to be happy about?
Asking for some degree of politeness is correct. Like no ripping off your robe and streaking, or throwing eggs at someone. But witholding the degrees for a beach ball? For cheering? Then making them do work?
No. That’s not all right. These people need to pull the large stick out of their ass and loosen up. Graduation should be a time of happiness, not a time of rigid formality.
People seem too forget when they were young and become, as my granny would say, sticks in the mud.
Stunned and amazed!
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe this kind of thing might be some kind of government conspiracy to brainwash kids into believing that if you break the slightest rule–even an imaginary one–or don’t act just right, they will pay. They also learned that the government (the public school) can withhold the fruit of their labor (their diplomas) at whim.
Personally, I would prefer to abolish public school entirely, and instead provide vouchers redeemable at schools under private control. With the public school system, the poli-crats get to control every aspect of the educational experience, resulting in involuntary psychoanalysis, “sex education” that violates personal standards of decency and morality, “zero tolerance” policies that teach kids to accept gun control, drugging kids into a stupor with Ritalin, and “prayer in schools” debates with communist lawyers who twist the First Amendment on one side versus right-wing politicians who take the stance of “I Heart God More Than That Yonder Candidate” while snorting coke and cheating on their wives.
What kind of lesson is a child to learn from this nonsensical, authoritarian response? That even if he performs his duties in excellence every day for four long years, it can be negated in the space of five minutes, by the actions of others over which he has no control?
What power does the graduating student have that the school administrators do not have to control the crowd? The ACLU spokesman should remember that the school’s ability to control the “decorum” at an event does not extend further than the boundaries of each individual’s civil rights. That means the school must confine their actions to the persons that are in violation of the rules, and does not somehow magically transfer individual responsibility for someone else’s actions to the student they cheer for.
Apply that skewed logic to other situations, and it quickly becomes clear just how idiotic the school’s position is.
For example, at the next school board meeting, the superintendent rises to give a short speech. Every time he makes a good point, three citizens in the back of the room cheer and whistle loudly. So the local policeman in attendance grabs the superintendent by the arm and escorts him out of the building for disrupting the meeting.
Does that sound at all sensible to anyone with a pulse and the mental capacity of an eight year-old?
Or imagine what would happen at the next presidential debate in which the moderator, having asked the audience to hold its applause until the end of the debate, expelled one of the candidates because the crowd cheered at an especially good one-liner. The moderator would be considered extremely fortunate if he managed to avoid tar and feathering!
The bottom line is that most of the young people graduating are over 18, and considered adults with the full compliment of rights belonging to adults, in the eyes of the law. The school administrators, being accustomed to imposing their arbitrary will on children who are not considered to be endowed with the full set of rights that comes with adulthood, are showing just how arbitrary that power can be when it is wielded by authoritarians without conscience. They might get away with it in the classroom where children are subject to that arbitrary power, but the adults that walk across the stage, having earned the right to their diplomas, have also earned the right to never again be subject to the whim of arbitrary power.
They should exercise that right, and demand that they receive the diplomas they have earned, teaching the “educators” a lesson in the personal humility endemic to a free society.
I think that this is outrageous. Has our country become so totalitarian that we have to regulate even the joyous cheers of our friends & family members celebrating the graduation of our children? I think that this principal has gone too far & needs his lousy controlling self sued so badly that he’ll think twice about punishing children for something that they had no control over. These kids were humiliated in front of their loved ones because of this principal. You only get one high school graduation & that’s not the way you want to remember it, & you can’t redo it. You can’t take it back. If there is a petition out there that can be signed, add me because I find this uncalled-for.
A child’s diploma, which was earned by years of hard work, should not be held hostage by a school. Moreover, a child cannot be held responsible for the misbehavior of unidentified audience members. This administration has lots its moral bearings.
To complain, write to the administration!
http://www.streaks.org/email.html
I have to agree how absurd this whole thing is. I just attended my third childs graduation and must say with each one this situation has become more ridiculous! I must say the plain clothes policeman (as well as the enormous amount of uniformed policeman) going into the stands to “kick out” the ones cheering was much more distrubing to me than the cheering and yelling was for the kids!! I missed more names being called due to the distraction of policeman bouncing people out than I ever would have simply because someone cheered out of happiness for their child! What is this world coming to!!!!!! At one point the entire stage of graduates cheered for someone walking across that stage …. they didn’t boot them out!! But yet they booted out countless numbers of family members and friends for cheers that lasted no more than five seconds!!! Police hauling out families and friends was so much more disturbing and disrespectful to the graduates in my opinion! Unbelievable …. I just don’t understand what motivates some people to push their “power”. It’s certainly not common sense!!