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Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Aguilar: Pink tights and graduation blues
By George Aguilar
Rational Animal
IF WE stop and think about it, graduating from college is the only graduation that really matters. It is the culmination of long years of study and a rite of passage into the real world for many of the youth of the land. And yet graduation, even from college or graduate school, is just that--a rite, a symbolic passage into adulthood. One need not attend a particular graduation ceremony in order to get one's academic credentials; the credentials come with the S.O. number in the transcript. That S.O. number guarantees that one has indeed graduated from studies.
But we Filipinos, sentimental as we are, put more importance to marching for graduation than the actual learning experience. For many parents, watching their child, now a young man or woman, go up the stage in their togas to receive a piece of paper is the reward for long years of toil and suffering. Parents themselves want to attend a graduation ceremony that is why schools arrange elaborate rituals to please them even though graduation rites are really just for show. So be it.
That doesn't mean, however, that graduation rites need to be expensive for both the school and the parents. In these financially difficult times, we all have the obligation to make the peso last.
Everybody, and not just the government, will have to do some serious cost cutting if we are to bring the economy back on track. Graduation ceremonies can be a simple yet elegant affair, held at a garden for example rather than in a hotel for economic reasons.
It's the love and sincerity among the graduating students and their parents that make a graduation special, not the pomp and glitter that make some graduation ceremonies look petty and superficial.
In the University of the Philippines, graduates wear long-sleeved barongs and dresses for their graduation rites. That's practical--no one wears a toga outside a graduation rite so why spend up to more than a thousand for one that will be used only for that graduation day? Besides, a barong and its counterpart for women is actually more elegant, more politically correct than a toga, a remnant of the medieval times in Europe. Togas are also horridly hot; it's unnecessarily cruel to force graduating students and the faculty to wear the toga on a hot summer day for graduation.
Some schools arrange expensive graduation ceremonies for high school and elementary students. High school students shouldn't have to be made to attend expensive graduation ceremonies. The parents can use the graduation fees as part of the tuition of their children when they go to college. Many high schools and grade schools even force their graduating students to wear white or colored togas which is not only more expensive on the part of the parents who have to rent the damn things, but silly. Black togas look silly enough but a light blue toga or a white one is just plain ridiculous. Togas are just pieces of clothe, it does not contribute to one's learning experience, it merely adds to the illusion that graduation ceremonies are actually important.
Nursery, kindergarten, and prep schools in Bacolod also get into the graduation scene. Children who are not even old enough to spell graduation are made to attend a variation of the graduation rite called recognition day. Recognition day is that time of year when toddlers are given pieces of paper stating that they were good or the most obedient in class. Schools sell the illusion that graduation rites are necessary to our children at a very young age. Unfortunately, many schools have set graduation rites on a weekday.
That means parents won't be able to attend or will have to miss work. My wife and I have been willing victims to graduation rites these past three years. The first was the recognition rite for our daughter after finishing her nursery studies at the St. Joseph Learning Center in Do$a Juliana Subdivision. It was held at Lopue's East and the children were made to wear white dresses or long-sleeved shirts. We bought the white dress for my child thinking that she could wear it again on some other occasion but she never did. My child already has a sense of fashion and would not wear a white dress if she could help it. Next year was graduation day from kindergarten at the School for Creative Beginners.
The administration of Creative Beginners was more practical. They had my daughter wear any nice dress for her graduation. I still feel gratitude for that school for not forcing me to buy another white dress for my child on her graduation day.
This year, my daughter is graduating once more. She is graduating from Prep. It would have been another joyous occasion for family only that they're holding it on a Monday morning so working parents won't probably be able to attend. Also, the graduating Prep students will have a program so their parents will have to buy costumes costing to as much as P500 and that doesn't include the pink tights and ballet shoes that go with the costume. Five hundred pesos at this financially difficult times hurt. It's worth half a sack of rice that my family could feed on for a month.
After the recognition day, my child won't be able to wear the ballet costume to Mass or to the mall. But that's not all, I can probably borrow P500 from someone, but where should I go to buy pink tights? I've been all over Bacolod City looking for pink tights and so far, I haven't found any.
In fairness to the school administration, they nor the teachers had almost nothing to do with this costly and ill-timed recognition day. As I understand it, it was the PTA that decided to have an expensive program those most working parents wouldn't be able to attend anyway.
Those PTA members are probably rich and do not have to go to work everyday that's why they are requiring us to shell out at least P500 each for costumes (what's P500 to people like them anyway) for a program on a working day. I just wish that those people who did this were more sensitive and practical. Pink tights during recognition day, that's one for the books!
(March 15, 2005 issue)
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