June is graduation month.
Families will be flying back and forth across the country to cheer on graduates from high schools and colleges who are celebrating the end of their educational journey and the beginning of the rest of their lives.
In my town, that same sort of celebration will happen for scores of young people who will don caps and gowns and march across the stage to collect an utterly worthless piece of paper--one that says they have successfully completed the eighth grade.
In some families, this minor achievement will be celebrated with gifts, parties, hoopla and relatives flying in from across the country.
That is far too much pomp for not nearly enough circumstance.
Consider these statistics from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: The median weekly wage for someone with less than a high school diploma-- someone who has graduated the eighth grade, for example-- was $454 in 2009. Earn a high school diploma and the median weekly wage rises to $626. Every additional level of educational attainment translates directly into more earning power, right up to a weekly median of $1,532 for someone with a doctorate. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for high school dropouts in 2009 was 14.6 percent, versus 9.7 percent for high school graduates and 2.5 percent for Ph.D.s.
So why would we celebrate an eighth grade graduation as anything more than another small step on a child's educational journey?
When my son graduated the eighth grade two years ago and I questioned why there would be a graduation ceremony complete with caps, gowns and a walk across the stage, a school official confided in a conspiratorial whisper, "This will be the only graduation some families ever celebrate."
What a sad thought. Why celebrate something you know without a doubt will set up your child for a lifetime of struggle and hardship?
Even President Obama has waded into the discussion. According to a 2008 New York Times story, Obama told a Chicago congregation: "Now hold on a second -- this is just eighth grade. So, let's not go over the top. Let's not have a huge party. Let's just give them a handshake.... You're supposed to graduate from eighth grade."
My daughter will be one of the many eighth graders crossing the stage this year. She'll be wearing a borrowed dress, although she did talk me into a new pair of shoes. We'll go out to dinner after the ceremony. No one will fly in and there will be no party. She still has to learn her way through four years of high school and four years of college. To stand out from the crowd, she will need additional years of graduate school.
Obama is right: Completing the 8th grade is an accomplishment worthy of a handshake, not a plane ticket.
Submit Your Feedback