Way to Graduate!

Being a teacher is sometimes a little bit like being in the movie Groundhog Day, if it were a year instead of a day. The job requires you to attend the same events annually, and the effect is that these events run into each other and become indistinguishable over time.  Two weeks ago, I attended my thirteenth high school graduation in as many years. Add those to my own graduations, and my sister’s graduations years ago, and I hope you’ll forgive me for tuning out when another valedictorian starts talking about “the best years of our lives” and “the lessons we’ve learned here.”

I’ve become pretty jaded so perhaps this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it has to be said nonetheless: Graduating from high school is an incredibly overrated achievement, and the pageantry surrounding it is completely out of step with what has actually been accomplished.

Look, I know there are places in this country where graduating high school is not to be taken for granted. In Baltimore City, where I live, the graduation rate is %72, a figure that doesn’t take into consideration students who drop out before ninth grade. If a kid from such a school works hard and wants to pull out all the stops after they cross the stage, they should feel entitled to. But at most public and private high schools located in more privileged areas, graduation is essentially a foregone conclusion. My own high school, and the two where I’ve taught, fall into this category, so I’ve seen their graduation rituals firsthand – many times. For almost every student here, dropping out of high school was not even a remote consideration. It was obvious from the first day of their freshman year that they would graduate, and that they would do so in the standard four years.

The irony is that the schools where graduation from high school is taken for granted are the ones that raise the biggest hoopla for their graduates. There’s prom, school-sanctioned activities for after-prom, the graduation ceremony itself, and other assorted senior year activities. (Senior Picnic at one of the schools where I taught, a four-Day Senior Retreat at another. Plus Senior Breakfast, Senior Skip Day, Beach Week, and a smattering of other events throughout the school year.) Under-performing schools don’t offer the same lavish slate of activities. At the graduation ceremony, their families may sometimes bring impressive lung power (see below), but this pales in comparison to spending power.

Much respect to this guy. (Play it til the end.) Although, I wonder if his kid was embarrassed...

Prom is surely the capstone of these annual end-of-year events. Those who don’t work at schools, or who don’t have high school age kids themselves might not be aware of all that it now entails. Senior prom, in privileged communities, is not your parents’ school dance with some streamers in a gym. Competition between neighboring schools has ratcheted up the “prom arms race” in recent years. It now includes the often elaborate “Prom-posal,” the search for an obscenely expensive dress, the requisite limousine, and then the dance itself, which more and more frequently, takes place at a fancy hotel or social club. (Here in Baltimore, a popular venue is the Center Club, an elegant ballroom located on the top floor of the city’s tallest skyscraper, with views overlooking the Inner Harbor and beyond.)

All this to celebrate the kid who may have just eked out a 2.0 GPA, at a school with a 99% graduation rate.

I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon, nor do I mean for this to come off as one of those tiresome screeds against spoiled “kids these days” and their entitled parents. Costs may be climbing as communities compete to outdo each other, but the truth is that the festivities surrounding my own high school graduation, almost twenty years ago, were plenty excessive in their own right. My parents wisely talked me out of renting a limousine to travel the five and a half miles from our house to the prom venue. But that venue in question was the Short Hills Hilton, easily one of the area’s most expensive event spaces. Our after-graduation celebration included an all-night cruise up and down the Hudson River, aboard a ship outfitted with an all-you-can-eat buffet (pointless, by the way, since I had just been out to eat with my family), a DJ, a dance floor, a caricaturist, a karaoke both, etc.

The following morning, after I had caught a couple hours of sleep, my mom woke me up to take me to the camp in Pennsylvania where I would be working for the summer. I was understandably exhausted once I got there, and probably not in the best state to try to make friends with the other counselors, none of whom I knew, and many of whom came from abroad to work in the US for a summer.

I remember telling a British guy the reason why I was so tired.

He blinked. “You Americans are crazy,” he said.

“Why? What did you do after you graduated?”

Pause. “Went down to the pub for a pint.”

I get that high school is challenging, and that for most, its challenges extend beyond literally just graduating. The vast majority of my classmates and the students I’ve taught have tried not merely to earn a diploma but to take the most challenging classes, to shine in these classes, and to excel in sports and extra-curriculars, all in the hopes of getting into a good college, or putting themselves in the best position to succeed at whatever they do next. Plus, the transition from high school to college marks the most important shift in many of our lives, one that brings us from our parents’ house to a freshman dormitory. It is, for so many, the most important and most visible coming-of-age moment. At such a moment, it’s natural for students and their families to want to mark the passage of time. And by all means, they should – with more than a mere celebratory pint, if they like.

All I’m saying is maybe we can dial it down a notch. There’s got to be a happy medium between the local pub and the Center Club.