Graduates, Thank Those Who Cared

In a few short weeks, high school graduations will be held throughout the county. Again, young men and women will don caps and gowns, march to the most famous part of Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” and swell with a sense of pride at what they’ve done. Congrats to the grads, but more honor to the adults who stood beside and behind them. As those adults, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, unrelated mentors stood behind them, perhaps there was either a hand on the shoulder, or a well-deserved kick for motivation, mental if not physical.
We know youth sometimes lacks the knowledge of a reason to push forward. A failed test is enough to discourage a teen, especially if the failure was in a subject they don’t particularly find exciting. Still, the wise and caring voice from an adult was there to bolster a sagging ego. Perhaps they imparted an ancient tale of when they, back in the age of dinosaurs, also failed tests, but went on to excel in the subject, taking failure not as a mark of their worth, but as a stepping stone for a new beginning.
Recently, my seventh grade granddaughter Kate was inducted, along with a crowd of others from Middle Township Middle School, into the National Junior Honor Society. As I looked around the room, it became apparent to any keen observer those young men and women all had one thing that united them, a common bond, and it wasn’t on the platform on stage, it was seated out in the cafeteria: admiring and proud parents, grandparents and others. Another thing, which cannot be considered in the public arena of education, was that many of those children and their parents regularly attend religious services. Could there be something unseen that can’t be discussed in public? Parents who set and live by a high standard expect the best from their offspring. Very often they see the fruits of their labor honored as was that group of seventh and eighth graders May 21.
We have all heard complaints of just about every school system in this county and beyond. It’s easy to rail against the teachers and administration, but classroom teachers, those who are in the trenches of education every school day, will be among the first to declare they cannot educate a child alone. Like a fire, this requires three elements: combustible material, oxygen and a heat source, a successful student needs just as many: teacher, student and parent or guardian. They are the required elements of education. Is it easy? Definitely not! I marvel just listening to how subjects are taught today, vastly different than decades ago, so how’s a parent to know how to help their student? It all starts with communication. Students cannot learn in a void. Teachers cannot teach in a void. Parents cannot expect to send little Megan or Justin off to kindergarten and expect, like a mass production line for teen-aged Megan or Justin to emerge 12 years later from high school clasping a diploma, filled with knowledge. It simply doesn’t happen.
We, a society enamored with technology and armed with money from somewhere, have come to rely upon gadgets and bucks to educate our children. We have the flawed notion that, if we spend enough money on “educational things” the next generation will, of its own accord miraculously absorb knowledge as a sponge does to spilled milk. Again, it just doesn’t happen.
Such thoughts are not new to humanity. We can only imagine a fresh-faced chap Ptolemy I Soter, a ruler of some stature among the ancient world, disgusted with having to memorize geometric principles. Rich as he was why could he not buy his way to education? Thus, he is reported to have asked Euclid if there was a shorter, easier way to learn Euclid’s Elements of geometry. The famed answer, as true today as back then: There is no royal road to geometry.
Some things simply have to be committed to memory placing the student back in time with old P.I.S. himself.
It may be 2014 going onto 2015, but the personal touch of parent or guardian to student is the only way to ensure a worthwhile education. If they can instill just one thing in their student at a young age it ought to be a lifelong love of learning. Armed with a high school diploma, one can go far. Bolstered by a college diploma, one may go even farther and make more money, but we all know it’s not that sheepskin on the wall that makes a wise man or woman. God-given talents are unique to every boy and girl, no two are alike. One may graduate from technical high school and be “on fire” with an idea to succeed, and they will. Nothing will stand in their way. Others may need more years of learning to attain their degrees and dreams. Regardless of where they wind up, those who stand tall and succeed will, almost to a person, look back and thank a parent, grandparent or guardian who took time, early on, to show them just how important they were, and showed them how far they could go if they united with their teachers and really wanted to learn.
Education is that golden door anyone can open; all it takes is a lot of hard work.