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The amount and length of graduation ceremonies has proliferated a great deal since my days in K-12. Not only are 5th and 8th grade promotions growing ever more elaborate (with increasingly questionable choices of attire), now there are even kindergarten and pre-school ceremonies.

A friend recently shared with me that her eighteen-month-old was put in a cap and gown at his daycare graduation. What’s next, popping a miniature tasseled hat on newborns to honor their graduation from womb to non-umbilical-cord-dependent-existence?

Another acquaintance noted he has twenty-two graduation ceremonies to attend. Twenty-two??? I hope he is flush considering each graduate likely expects a gift!

I get the importance of honoring achievements and communally celebrating life’s passages, but our culture’s graduation overload runs the risk of cheapening worthy accomplishments. When you get photos, gifts, and pomp starting with “daycare graduation,” might’nt the allure of a college graduation have a been-there-done-that type of feel by the time one gets there?

The popularity of graduation ceremonies and parties in our culture is further evidenced by the endless consumer opportunities: Buy professional photos of your three-year-olds pre-school graduation! Purchase a kindergarten-promotion DVD! Get your hummer limo rented now for 5th grade graduation Pay for a select group of your classmates to have exclusive entry into an amusement park! Get your graduating 8th grader a new laptop or designer purse! Or, as this mom suggests, offer a trip to wherever they want to go in Europe! For your high-school graduate, how about a new car or new boobs? What better time to surgically alter yourself “for the better” before you head off to college?

From the cards to the flowers to the photos to the gift certificates, if you are not spending on your young grad, the message is that you must not care. And this – the conflation of achievement with expenditure – is problematically championed from birth on.

This commodification of achievement is further evidenced via the fashion at such events. At my daughter’s 5th grade promotion, high heels adored the tiny 11-year-old feet and some of the dresses rivaled those seen at Hollywood awards ceremonies.

When young people are schooled to believe achievement is consecrated via consumerism, academic accomplishments go by the wayside. Instead of celebrating brain power, dedication, and hard-work, graduates are encouraged to focus on the cut of their dress, the height of their heels, the size of their after-graduation party.

Whatever happened to good-ole graduation certificates/diplomas and perhaps a few flowers? Those days are gone it seems in this culture of consumerized kids…