Just...Shut Up?
Some thoughts on graduaton ceremonies and respect.
I am not a fan of graduaton ceremonies.
I have a right to feel this way. As a teacher, I have been to more of them than you have (unless you share the profession and have been at it for 30 years). And, let’s not forget that, when I go, I am wrapped up like Dumbledore in a robe fashioned of what I can only describe as military-grade tent canvas, topped off with a yak-fur hood encasing my neck as I sizzle in the setting summer sun. “Oh it’s not so hot at grad time, Chris,” you say? This year two people passed out. We have an ambulance ready for this, just off the field, each year…
But enough of my “yakking.” (Clever, no?) What I really want to address is decorum. I can live with the heat-stroke. I can deal with the boredom. I can stay awake through the speeches. It’s the parent behavior that really boils my potatoes.
I used to “emcee” those ceremonies, back when I was a vice-principal. (I’m back to teaching English full-time now and I am in professional heaven.) When I took to the podium at graduation ceremonies, I used to ask, nicely: “As I call the graduates’ names, please refrain from clapping or yelling so that the person after your graduate gets the recognition he or she deserves.” This year, our dean of students made the same request before the ceremony and the principal repeated it just before the reading of the names. At my son’s college graduation, the Dean of Rutgers made the same request. It’s a waste of breath, all around.
We all know it is, but we try because we think maybe people will be able to act like human beings for this somber and traditionally dignified event. People used to ignore me; people ignored our dean of students and principal, and people ignored my son’s
dean. In fact, at the Rutgers graduation, I can only describe the families’ screaming as nothing short of “animalistic.” Mix in an airhorn or a New Year’s spinny noisemaker (literally) with the battle-cry of a dyspeptic Celtic berserker and you will have some idea of the clamor.
Here’s the thing: If one ignores the request for silence, there are only three possibilities in terms of what is going on: 1) The screamers think, “Eff you, I don’t care about the person after my kid; or, (2) the screamers are egocentric enough that the idea is instinctually irrelevent to them; or, (3) they just don’t lisetn to anything that is being said, outside of poopsie’s name when poopsie crosses the stage.
None of those three posibilities is a good look. And they are just another piece of evidence behind my (and many others’) claim that courtesy and social respect toward our fellow humans is dying. I still think manners matter, What I don’t think is that there is hope for manners to make a comeback.
When I was a kid, a show called “Schoolhouse Rock” taught us that “the most important person in the world to you is you.” One can see the sociologically important purpose of sending kids this message, but, in time, I believe it got misinterpreted as encouragement for ego-centrism.
Somewhere along the line, the fostering of self-respect and self-advocacy got swapped with a “to Hades with everyone else” attitude. In this case: “My kid is the most important.” Whether it is a conscious decision or an subconscious reaction, I think the origin is the same. (The same thing, for example, has happened with college. The accurate idea that “not eveyone needs college” has been morphed into “college is a complete waste of time.” We like extremes and we move to them like metal shavings to magnets.)
You might wonder why I write about this stuff when it’s clear I don’t think it will get better. I guess it is like what I tell my students about Jonathan Swift’s viscious satire. Why would he bother to criticize humanity if he didn’t have some hope? I guess I have some hope, despite my yamering.
But for now…at your kids’ graduation…could you just [and I ask this with love]…please…just…stuff a sock in it?