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June 2005
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Recognized

Last night I had the honor of being invited to the “Grade 8 Recognition” at a local Middle School here in Bloomington. For those of you unfamiliar with the US educational system, at the end of the 8th year, students move from “Middle School” to “High School.” In many communities, this transition happens with a ceremony to mark the significance of the event.

I was attending the recognition of a friend’s son, so I had somebody to cheer for. We went off to the Middle School in order for the son to walk the plank- errr- stage- errr- gym floor as he prepares to depart the school for the greener fields of a local high school next fall.

Unfortunately since we weren’t paying attention and didn’t read the program until after we sat down, we managed to sit as far away from where the son as we could and still be in the same room. Consequently the photos I took are boring, consisting of large herds of middle school students, with the son featured primarily as a distant speck. They won’t be posted to the blog (more privacy concerns, rather than the abysmal quality of the photos, but that’s a decent justification as well).

The program lasted about an hour and a half and did not include, much to my surprise, the National Anthem. The omission of the National Anthem leads me to believe that the Bloomington schools are providing a decent education. I always feel conspicuous when I don’t stand, and I hate pretending that a piece of cloth sets policy, although given our current president, perhaps that is preferable.

The Musical Selections were performed by the 8th grade orchestra and were audible over the din of the conversing audience, which then fell silent as the processional was performed and the students filed in by team and sat down in rows.

The rest of the program was agonizing. Agonizingly long that is. First up was the principal who said something forgettable-probably the usual suspect that this was the greatest class in the history of the earth and that she was going to miss them. She wasn’t slurring her words, so I assume she was sober.

She gave way for the attendance awards which were bizarre. People either had excellent attendance or they had perfect attendance, but perfect attendance didn’t mean perfect, and excellent attendance was marginally different from perfect attendance, and it took a long time to list all the names. My friend’s son didn’t qualify for either-but quite frankly the fact that anybody did suggests that they must not keep careful records.

Next up was the Honor Roll Segments. First they announced the “honor roll,” where about half the class stood up for having high, but not the highest, grades. After that they did the highest grades – the “high honor roll” which consisted of about a quarter of the class. The number of students that stood suggested to me that there is a serious problem with grade inflation.

Next up were the President’s Awards, which were given out in the name of the President of the United States of America. No joke. Seriously. Our dim-witted president gives out awards to high achieving students. There were quite a few of these-all of them probably a heck of a lot smarter than the president.

This was followed by Math Awards, Band and Orchestra awards. The program lists Art Awards, but I don’t recall art awards being handed out. I do remember the Book Club (people who get together once a week to talk about books-mostly girls) and the Young Hoosier Book Award (two students had bothered to vote in a trivial election, so we were forced to recognized them at the end of the year). The Orchestra Awards were listed in the program a second time, but thankfully we did not have to listen to them again.

The last in the award series was the “Pride Award” where ten students, 5 boys and 5 girls, were nominated by their classmates and then through some kind of elaborate scheme were punished for being bad and rewarded for being good. After listening to the explanation of how the winners were selected, I checked my bank account to make sure that the Nigerian Government hadn’t taken out the $10,000 necessary to get the $1.4 million dollars out of the country that they promise to split with me. Ultimately one young man and one young lady were selected as having the most pride in the school. Said children were lumbered with extremely large plaques recognizing their team sprit. I believe the reward was sponsored by one of the local chiropractic clinics as the children returned to their seats struggling under the weight of the awards.

Finally after all of this members of each team were recognized individually as they walked across the gym floor. The Blue Team, my friend’s son’s team, was the last team. I nearly fell asleep waiting for his name to be called. He grabbed his award, and like every other student in the school, was grabbed by the principal and held still for a professional photograph. The principal appeared to have practiced her smile and had the same look on her face for all students.

At the conclusion of this portion, we were directed to follow the youngums down to the cafeteria where there were cookies and drinks. We did as we were instructed-the son had gone down the hallway. We got down there and were ignored by the son while he talked to his friends. Typical 14 year old behavior, but just as we were congratulating the principal on posing with every student, he remembered who we were and told us it was time to depart quickly!

We sped out the door.

3 comments to Recognized

  • MT

    Have you seen “The Incredibles” yet? There’s a great line in the movie (which I will paraphrase badly here) where the father says: “All we do is reward mediocrity.” That sounds like this awards night thing. 😉

  • Annie

    I got an award for being the best roller-blader in primary school. Do you want to join us for CampusParty (www.campusparty-jena.de) next week??? Katya, Matt and Matt are coming also. Please let me know that I can get you a ticket.

  • Jerry

    The Indy Star editorial board produced a 5-day series exploring Indiana’s dismal high school graduation rate, focusing especially on IPS and the suburban townships. I think one article mentioned the importance of the 8th grade ‘recognition’ because, for some individuals, it will be the only ‘graduation’ they will ever attend.