Well, Barack Obama does have something right. You are supposed to graduate from 8th grade. At a minimum.
I honestly think it is a lot of hullabaloo to do a whole big graduation thing for middle school, but hey, just call me Grinch. Our younger son B just "graduated". They had a whole big ceremony complete with performances by the band, orchestra and even a phenomenal band call the Riddles.
There was a 13 year old who wrote lyrics and music to an unbelieveable song called "At the End of the Path" which, quite frankly, blows a lot of "commercial music" currently on the radio out of the water. It was amazing to see him perform and he had three other friends doing bass, electric guitar, lead guitar and drums. It was also adapted for the orchestra and band and they backed him up.
There were also speeches. One of the girls is the daughter of someone I used to be very friendly with when we first moved to town. We had a sort of falling out when she planned her son's birthday party on the same date and time as mine when she knew about it. (ps it wasn't even his birthday and she also stole the idea for the theme of it--remember the fire engine party?). She is part of the PTA mafia. We are friendly enough but I steer away from most of those "mavens," not having the girl handbook and all. Her daughter is an exquisitely beautiful and poised speaker. The other girl who spoke was very funny and cute. The other male speaker was a boy who was the GO president who talked about working for the communal good. called all of the students "comrades" several times and must have pulled out the thesaurus. My son said he is very smart. Not true, because much of what he said was an inappropriate usage of the language, but I guess it passes with most 13-14 year olds. The parents smiled and there was a lot of eye rolling.
Anyhow, it was pretty nice. I just think that instead of celebrating the kids, maybe we should have celebrated the teachers?
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3 comments:
Graduations should always celebrate the teachers.
Mine "graduated" today :)
Graduations for anything but high school and college are pandering to the uber-parents. Unless you are not likely to finish high school, this is just a moving up day. Celebrations for nursery school (yes, our PA president wanted caps and gowns for 4 year olds but was nixed by the clear-thinking nursery school director), kindergarten, elementary and then middle school dilute the essence of graduations. The kids have been through them so much by the time they get to high school, they have no patience, let alone respect, for the pomp and circumstance. In earlier grades, their is not enough labor to see the fruits of such. It's all too much pomp and not enough circumstance if you ask me.
Have you seen "The Incredibles" lately? One of the best line is when Mr. Incredible has to go to a 4th grade graduation and he says something like "they come up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity every day." I googled "incredibles celebrate mediocrity" to find out the exact line and came up with this:
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/new-ways-to-celebrate-mediocrity/
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