This past weekend many local high schools performed graduation ceremonies. Now many of the high school administrators, parents, guests are complaining.
I have not been to a graduation since my own high school graduation. I even skipped my college ceremony (luckily they sent it with the first alumni ask for support).
Over the years, I understand that the ceremony has not only become much more long, it also has turned into an episode of Jerry Springer. Whooping and hollering - even cussing or using racial slurs.
The air horns, the vocal screams got so bad that people were escorted out after their child's name was called.
I think we had 200 people graduate in the class of 86 from Carroll High School. The only noise made between names were other classmates going "who is that" or "I never saw that person". It seemed like our 200 name-calling event lasted for a couple hours. I could not imagine if there were 500 or 1,000.
My guess is that parents dreamt that if they make enough noise, they could leave as soon as their kids name was called ... but did not want to make a scene. Then they thought, oh yeah, if I make a scene, I can leave immediately. Thus, the creation of the parents processional.
Parents figure - if my kid won't be left behind neither will I ...
1 comment:
We had the 'pleasure' of going to 3 high school graduations about two years ago. It was awful. It got to the point that the family and friends would just get ready when their graduates' name was called. They'd all scream and whoop it up while they were standing and then just head for the door. It was like it was a big badge of pride for them to be like "you don't need to walk me out...I'm going". Nice. That may be the only moment of glory or accolade that some of those kids have and they turn it as you said into the Jerry Springer show!
I'm starting to think that now they should just call it "Graduates 2008"...because there sure isn't any "class" involved!
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