It’s prom time again. I call it the silly season because, in my mind, many kids and their parents take on a peculiar kind of madness which drives them to embarrassing materialistic excesses and public spectacle in order for the children to attend the traditional high school prom.
By now, weﾒve all heard of or actually witnessed the stretch limousines, vintage cars and even a horse-drawn carriage or two which transport our little darlings to the site of the actual prom dinner and dance. We know about the furious and focused purchases of designer ball gowns, expensive jewelry and other accessories, elaborate hairstyles and the like. Iﾒve even heard tales of dyeing and outfitting the familyﾒs miniature dog to match the young female graduateﾒs outfit so that said pooch could be used as a perfectly coordinated hand prop for the grand entrance.
Not to be out-done, the young men too have taken to primping, pressing and mincing for the occasion. Perfectly-tailored formal wear, dramatic accessories like ascots, capes and scarves are accompanied by specially-purchased earrings, pocket watch chains and other jewelry. All these are now required pieces for proper prom appearance.
Some of this behaviour is indeed extremely silly – the overdressing, the over dramatization, the excessive use of props. Some of it is foolish in the extreme – over spending on non-working kids for a function which only lasts a few hours is what my banker calls reckless and irresponsible application of good money. Most of it though, can be viewed as perhaps a 21st century way of marking a traditional rite of passage.
Graduation from high school has long been considered an important milestone in the lives of adolescents. It marks not only the end of legally-mandated basic education, but it also signals, in many ways, the formal ending of childhood and the beginning years of responsible adulthood. In many communities then, this calls for some ritualistic marking. The promenade, or ﾑpromﾒ as we have shortened it, has become that rite of passage. As is usually the case for milestone moments in human societies, this important rite too has come to be marked with special elaborate costumes, music, dancing and feasting.
When viewed in this light, the colourful and glamorous prom clothing accompanied by special effects, an elaborate meal and dancing are simply todayﾒs version of what mankind has always done to signal an important moment, a transition from one stage of development to another.
There a few additional dimensions to todayﾒs prom picture however. Some spoilsports and curmudgeons among us have suggested that since, by general consensus (and according to national statistics) the vast majority of our high school leavers are not faring well in the grades department, and are, therefore, not truly deserving of the term ﾑhigh school graduate,ﾒ they should not be allowed the privilege of a prom. These complaining folk are suggesting that the students should either be kept back in high school until they manage to attain some decent grades, or that they should simply be quietly and discreetly let out of school with no fuss and ceremony at all.
I differ with the complainers however, but it will take several columns for me to carefully articulate my reasons for departing from this highly punitive way of thinking. Suffice it to say though, that an educational system which accepts the responsibility to train and educate children for twelve years (with several stops for assessment along the way) and has managed only minimal success, has little hope of improving the graduating students it failed to educate by holding them back for more years in the same system which failed them in the first place.
Add to this the reality that ready or not, psychological and physiological adulthood has caught up with the 12th grade student, and you will be inviting both implosion and explosion by attempting to keep these new adults confined to a childrenﾒs environment.
What do you do with an adult non-reader who is ready to leave school? Certainly, you do not force him to stay behind in a classroom with much younger children whom we are also not teaching to read!
When it comes to the achievement of our children, this public hand-washing (like Pontius Pilate of the Bible) and calling for extremely punitive measures as we are wont to do must stop. The children did not fail themselves, we as the parents, teachers, leaders and decision makers of the educational system failed them. After all, they did not teach themselves, did not assess themselves and had absolutely no part in making decisions about what course their education would take.
We continue to allow, tolerate, and in some instances, to cooperate with educational systems and leadership which fail our kids, and at the end of the process, we self-righteously declare our innocence and our separation from it all. It cannot be that simple; we cannot continue to stand aside and blame everything and everybody else but ourselves. We are all responsible for what our children accomplish or when they fail.
We are the ones approving the monies, endorsing the leadership, supporting the curriculum, accepting the assessment models, tolerating the dumbing-down of our children. And at the end, we sit in judgment and express surprise that our kids are wanting in certain fundamental areas.
“Put them back,” we say. “Donﾒt reward them,” we scream. “Stop the proms,” we cry.
By: Theresa Moxey-Ingraham, The Bahama Journal
