A TRIP TO SILLYLAND

The merry month of May brings the end of "April showers" and the threshold month for June brides. But the merry month also brings something else: graduations. It used to be that said ceremonies meant that the graduates had accomplished something, and in so doing, they got to graduate twice, once from high school and once from college. But now graduations proliferate and have become silly.

Today, we hold graduation ceremonies for accomplishing little to nothing. We have graduation exercises for children who complete the daunting requirements of prekindergarten, kindergarten, and the 5th grade, so such a scholar has the opportunity to be honored by at least five separate graduations before he's through matriculating.

SILLY LAND

And some of these graduations border on "silly" or cross the silly line entirely, depending on your point of view. For example, in a ceremony for the graduates of the 5th grade at one school, parents, grandparents, and all the underclassmen of the elementary school lined the halls on the last day of school as the 5th graders paraded around the hallowed halls of their alma mater to the shouts, applause, and cheers of the assembled. Then there was a special ceremony in which certificates were awarded for this, that, and the other accomplishments of the ten year-olds. (Not to worry; every student went home with an award for something.)

Talk about silly: there's one college that held a graduation ceremony for pets, with the result that that institution now has a hedgehog as one of its grads. 

Another educational institution of lower learning had their kindergarten graduates attired in caps and gowns to celebrate the completion of their rigorous academic training.

THE SPEECHES

And then there are the ceremonies themselves, so let's focus on those for the high school and college graduates, ceremonies featuring speeches which are eminently and immediately forgettable. There's hardly a parental voice or a graduate's voice which does not weigh the speeches in the balance and declare them wanting. Everybody admits this, but we endure it year after year, all the while knowing that the Emperor has no clothes.

The commencement speeches usually have a common denominator phrased as a challenge: "Go out and change the world." Amazing. Are we expecting 22 year-olds to go out and change the world? Really? But that's not the main point.

The main point is that after thousands and thousands and thousands of graduates leave with that challenge ringing in their ears, how come things are only getting worse? How come we have people claiming they don't know if they're male or female? They've graduated; they should know their gender. They're educated, aren't they? How come we have school killings? How come we can't take a "Christmas vacation," but we can enjoy a "Winter Break?" How come a student at a university was expelled for posting on the Internet that he believed in one-man-one-woman marriage?

How come? How come? We could go on and on. But this shouldn't surprise us: "Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (II Timothy 3:13) Our graduates are changing the world, but, as the Bible predicts, it's not for the better.