Toby's great-niece graduated Friday night. We drove down to see the ceremony which was duller 'n dirt, but seeing C and her family was nice. C was born on Toby's birthday eighteen years ago. She is a lovely young lady. Her dad is about 6'4" and played football for Texas Tech. C got her height from him. She is about 5'9". Take a look at those high-heels. I love a girl with confidence and great taste in shoes.
The graduation ceremony was pretty horrible - the usual - push your children to get more ambition without equipping them for the world type speeches. Speeches that thanked their parents and such and glorifyied their high school days. One student thanked his teachers for giving him "faith" - what did that mean? Faith in what? Who knows? Two different girls presented music which was well below standard. In fact, it was just bad. Who told these girls they could sing? If that was the best the class had to offer, it made me wonder what else the school said was acceptable, but was, in fact, not even okay. The principal stood up on stage and said that he verified that each of these 140 students had met the requirements of the Texas State Board of Education and then he passed out diplomas. After hearing the speeches and the music, I figured those "requirements" must be set awfully low. Both the valedictorian and the salutatorian had grade point averages above a five point. When did we go to five points? If you get four points for an A, three for a B, two for a C, one for a D, how do you come up with five points. Are they giving points for F's now? Maybe they give extra points for something - who knows. One thing I do know, the speech teacher and the music teacher should be fired.
2 comments:
I think they give extra points for Honors and AP classes.
Do you remember one of those ceremonies/banquets/graduation things when I was in college, where the speaker kept saying, "This is what it's all about"! If he really believed that, I sincerely feel sorry for him. While I think school is very important, I surely didn't feel the same way he did. Then again, I wasn't a Truman Scholar with a 4.0.
Bo
Wow, after reading this I feel like I got off light at granddaughter Monique's graduation! The speeches were all pretty much the same, which is to say mediocre, but they weren't outright BAD. The principal of 'Nique's school praised his grads, too, but he backed up that praise with numbers... Monique's graduating class won over $300 million in scholarship money and set a Utah state record for most per-capita scholarship dollars.
The music wasn't bad, either. Actually, the choir was quite good, doing an a capella rendition of the Beatles' "In My Life." I was moved, but for other reasons.
I think Bo is right...I noticed the same thing ("how can you get better than a 4.0?") at another granddaughter's graduation and was told extra points were awarded for college-level and honors classes. Still seems lame to me...like "giving 110%," which is a pet peeve of mine.
Toby's niece DOES appear to be a confident lady!!
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