My oldest son is graduating. This is a very special time, except it's not. He's only five years old and he's graduating from 4-year old Kingergarten (4K).
4K was introduced in our community last year. It's designed to help students learn how to interact in a learning environment. It's funded by the school district, but not required. There are state standards and standardized testing, however, it's more play-based than academic-based and I am thankful for that. Basically, it's state funded preschool. Others have suggested that it rose in popularity because, hey, free day care. My fear is that the kindergarten I grew up with is now closer to first (or second) grade and pressure from parents wanting their kid to be the next prodigy results in more and more opportunities at younger ages -- that's another topic for another day, though.
I'm raising my kids in a culture of over-inflated senses of entitlement and self-esteem. How someone feels is more important than how they do. Being included is more valuable than measurable success. It's a culture that has a delusion of what "elite" looks like. There are several state tournaments for 10-year olds playing AAU basketball. Mom and Dad buy an expensive soccer jersey and suddenly they're on an all-star team traveling thousands of miles, but when they get to high school they're not even good enough to play varsity on an average team. Watered down varsity letters for every school activity...everyone's a winner...everyone deserves recognition...trophies...and the list goes on. A graduation ceremony for every step of the educational experience falls in-line with these trends. So, here we are.
I'm going to embrace this moment with my son because he's excited about it and his class has hyped it up quite a bit. My wife is even trying to get away from work to watch the ceremony. It's the last day of school and that's always worth celebrating. I don't want to pretend that he accomplished something great, though, because he didn't. We brought him to school each day and he finished because we didn't stop bringing him. He didn't set his alarm or get himself to school. He never pulled out homework when he got home. He had a few responsibilities at school, like changing his name tag from the "home" to the "school" category and he sat on his square when the teacher asked him to, however, these are basic and minimum requirements of childhood for a five year old. They're hardly worth recognizing with a ceremony.
Don't get me wrong, a graduation ceremony full of squirrely five year olds is going to be memorable. Someone is bound to do something funny and [hopefully] inappropriate. Moms will take pictures with their phones and post them on Facebook. A couple will even try to organize the chaos, someone is bound to get frustrated and then everyone will go home and wrestle over the next big life decision: peanut butter and jelly or mac n' cheese.
Sure it's cute, but isn't this sending a message that kids are to be rewarded for mediocrity and what should be excepted? Aren't we lowering the bar? Is it necessary to have a ceremony for these little whipper snappers upon completion of 4K? If it wasn't even scheduled, they wouldn't know the difference, but now that it's happening they will and they'll probably have another one next year after kindergarten, too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I wholeheartedly agree with you on all accounts. As an educational researcher I am continually frustrated by the pressure from society and media to overachieve too early in life and to celebrate mediocrity. I've also gone to the rituals, and they can be fun. But I hope the day I was hooded (for getting my PhD) will stand out more in my kids minds than the preK party they had earlier that week.
ReplyDeleteIt's been difficult to not support all of the things that others deem o.k. It's true, I prefer not to have my kids in traveling or all-star sports programs until High School, I won't take my 8-year old to PG-13 movies (there were tons of small children at X-Men last night), and I won't celebrate graduating a grade that everyone else graduates. We, of course, do celebrate school being over and the friendships that were made, but that is enough.
I agree, this is something that is happening, people DO have a false sense of entitlement, in my opinion, you get what you put in, this last year for example i didnt put in enough to be rewarded, thus i was not rewarded, i wasnt mad that i didnt get rewarded thoguh, i was mad that i didnt put enough in.
ReplyDeleteMark Kidwell - I 100% agree. It seems like every year we come up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity. They are very near to teaching children that it is wrong to be better than someone else at something. I kid you not one of my parents' neighbors actually asked his mother if he should always try his best because if he wins it will make the other kids sad. This is where they are at, so brainwashed that kids aren't 100% confident that they are even supposed to try their hardest if they are naturally gifted. Its crazy.
ReplyDeleteI personally never had a 4k graduation I only got 8th grade promotion and was pretty psyched but my biggest accomplishment was graduating high school that was my biggest struggle but I pushed through like I would when I wanted to win a national wrestling tournament that was something to be happy about I feel 4k graduation is good but I believe there shouldn't be one because like you guys said it's not something they had to work for our parents made sure we went to school everyday we didn't have to set an alarm so home work we just did what was said to us. Graduating in my eyes is something we work for and when the work is done that's the time we celebrate. Great topic
ReplyDelete