Graduation Ceremonies Before Senior Year Are Out of Control
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that kindergarten and eighth-grade graduation ceremonies have become excessive and dilute the meaning of actual graduation.
Key Takeaways
- Kindergarten graduation isn't graduation - Completing kindergarten is expected, not an achievement that warrants caps and gowns
- Eighth-grade promotion is fine, but keep it simple - A brief ceremony acknowledging the transition is appropriate; a full graduation is not
- Save the celebration for the real milestone - Over-celebrating routine transitions diminishes the significance of high school graduation
Transcript
What do we think of kindergarten and eighth grade graduation?
Now, my kids went to preschool and their preschool had a graduation.
Of course, the students don't come back after that, so it made a certain amount of sense to me that they wear the little caps and gowns and it was cute.
But I've seen a lot of pushback to the idea of kindergarten graduation, which again, a lot of people love.
It's really cute, the caps and gowns, the getting the little paper diploma.
A lot of people love that.
And then if you go up to eighth grade and talk about eighth grade graduation, you get even more pushback And I think people make a really good point that we don't want to send the message to eighth graders that like you're done with school, you can kind of blow off everything that happens from now.
The goal is high school graduation and probably beyond.
When I was a middle school teacher, our school absolutely refused to have an eighth grade graduation or to call whatever we did at the end of eighth grade a graduation because of the fear that it would send the message that yeah, you're done.
You don't really have to worry about anything after this.
And a lot of families did not like that.
They hated that their kid was not getting a cap and gown and getting to walk across the stage and celebrate their eighth grade graduation.
But I think that desire that those families had to see their kids graduate should be left intact, left unsatisfied, so that they push their kids to graduate from high school and not consider eighth grade good enough.
Because in this society, eighth grade is not good.
good enough.
So I think we've got some slightly different things going on with kindergarten and eighth grade.
I think with kindergarten, like I'm not worried that kids are going to give up after kindergarten.
Of course, I do think we celebrate too much.
I do think we make too big a deal of too many things.
And for the most part, we should be spending most of our time not doing cute things, not having assemblies, not having, you know, kind of pointless celebrations over like, yay, it's the end of the school year.
Like, why would you get that for kindergarten and not first grade and second grade and every other grade?
Like, We've got to back off on some of this just for the sake of cutting back.
But let me know what you think about this.
Do you like to see kindergarten graduations?
Do you think eighth grade graduation is actually a good idea?
Let me know what you think.