Do Grade School kids really "Graduate?"

Enough is enough people.  These “Graduations” that everyone is having is ridicules.  Have you lost your sense of reality?  What ever happened to encouraging a child to complete school so they could EARN a Diploma and Graduate?  Now we just hand them out like participation trophies and we HURT our kids, not help them.

Your child did NOT just graduate Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, or the Fifth Grade, just like I did not, you did not, nor MY child did not.  We were promoted to the next grade.  We completed the task ahead of us for the year and are moving toward the next task.  See, THAT is how school works.

A person should “Graduate” at least once in their life, high school.  If they are lucky perhaps they can graduate from college or military training.

When I graduated high school it was a bigger deal for my parents than it was for me.  Yes I worked hard and earned my diploma but not getting it was no an option for them.  I was to be the first of their children to walk that stage.  It was something my father pushed me to do, reminding me that if I did not cross that stage it was no one fault but my own.  When I finally did, after five long years, yes I said five, I was proud of myself.  I never experienced that feeling before because I had not earned it until then.

Every year I was promoted to the next grade until I reached the ninth grade and failed it. I was crushed, devastated, but no one gave me a pat on the head and said, “Oh well kid.  Here’s a trophy for trying.”  That is not how the real world works and if we do not prepare our kids for the real world it will devour them when they enter it.

Webster defines “Graduation” as the award or acceptance of an academic degree or diploma and a “Diploma” is a document which shows that a person has finished a course of study or has graduated from a school.  Tell me what degree has a grade school child earned?

Please stop robbing the full experience of what it actually means to graduate.  Once you “Graduate” you are ready to face the world and concur it.