A tart guest post by Libby, who also has been known to have strong opinions (are you surprised?) on the senior trip in our small town. Remember, most of our roads are not even paved!
"Out here is seems to be customary for the graduation senior class to take a trip during the last week or so of school. Until recently, the seniors all worked at various things to gather together enough money to go somewhere more or less local (western local, i.e. within a six or eight hour drive) -- Denver or Tucson, traveling on school buses. The past few years the entire thing has gotten completely out of hand, to the point of being offensive. Last year's senior class, or part of it anyway, flew to Orlando for two days, and then went on to spend five days in the Bahamas!! Whether or not one was included depended on how many "points" one had earned in various fund raisers. Of course the parents of the better off kids themselves bought all the chocolates and worked at all the car washes, and on and on to earn points for their little darlings. The poorer parents, themselves working two or three jobs to pay the bills and put food on the table, weren't able to contribute money or time, nor were their children who most likely were also working as well as trying to keep their grades up. So the end result was that about half the class got to go on this trip, while the others, unable to earns enough "points" i.e. Money -- were excluded. The entire thing was an ostentatious display of those who had versus those who didn't. No sense of working as a whole. And my big question all along the way was "where are the teachers and administrators who should be directing all this so that everyone in the class in included?" there are only about 30 kids that graduate here every year -- this trip was totally depressing for about half of them, those who couldn't go. And the other didn't care as they were going.
'As my Kansas raised brother-in-law says "They should be hitched to a plow."
'It offended much of the community who thought the entire thing excessive and indulgent...especially considering that all you have to do to graduate from high school here is maintain your body temperature to a moderate degree, and appear sentient on occasion".
2 comments:
This is not unique to your town but it very much the fact and pattern up here in Montana where the economy is "chicken today, feathers tomorrow." What's worse, it continues on into the adult lives and businesses. Our tiny mom&pop store is the only one in town, but the owners MUST have their vacation in Cancun in January and mark-up their groceries accordingly. This was certainly not true of their parents who ran the same store. What was once a great and rare treat has become an entitlement for some -- a tease and put-down for others. It's not as though these people went to third worlds in order to learn and contribute. The motels there can't be that different from the motels here.
Obviously, social promotion is alive and well in Magdalena, although I think that "No Child Left Behind" (which my education-major students are trained to denounce) is slowly whittling away at that on a national level.
Custer County HS has a senior class of 36, although I expect the economic level is a little higher. The school board just shut down their planned senior trip to the Bahamas (!!!) because "policy" requires them to remain in the USA and because of "liability issues.
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