By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
During my elementary days, graduation rites were done with great pomp and pageantry. We practiced our parts of the program for weeks and weeks, whether it was a dance, a play, a song or whatever. Things were taken seriously that time was sacrificed, mostly after classes until participants learned and could perform their assigned roles at acceptable levels of ease and expertise. Never mind if our teachers often got their blood pressure levels to rise too often to the stratosphere or beyond. Quite often during practice times, their voices could even be heard a kilometer or even farther away.
For during presentation, right before the graduates receive their diplomas or awards, the whole community would be there in their more-than-Sunday-best with the scent of mothballs all over the place.
Parents who sacrificed a lot for many years to come up with the required finances for their kids’ school needs would be teary eyed. Many of them had to travel far and wide from provinces to be able to escort their kids to the stage to receive their diplomas, or certificates of award. The size of a bond paper, these are proof of their having suffered numerous sleepless nights to finish academic requirements. Surely the sweat, tears and blood they and their parents suffered can never be fully captured enough in words or any description on paper.
Those were my elementary days, circa 60s. By the 70s things have changed so much that when I supposedly received my first college diploma no parent or relative even accompanied me. I was all alone when I climbed and went down the undecorated stage. No pomp and pageantry at all. No emotional touch at all. So plain and so cold. And things even got worse as time went on that I did not even attend any ceremony when I graduated from the college of law.
The fact that all my college graduations happened in a supposedly intellectual university and not given to emotional or non-intellectual considerations betrays, in hindsight as far as I am concerned, a lack of well-rounded humanistic development among its graduates.
And as to the parents, it means the institution’s lack of appreciation of their contribution to the country. Sending a kid to college who later contributes to society’s well-being means accomplishment of a big part of nation building.
The point I am driving at is, the graduation rites back then were more entertaining and inspiring to the kids or the younger generation, thus, inspiring them to strive more with all the sufferings entailed to finish college or a part of the educational hierarchy, qualifying them to climb up and march down the stage with a diploma or a certificate in hand.
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