“If someone can’t appreciate the difference between an award ceremony that honors achievement in academics or sports of the arts or whatever and the wearing of tee shirts with the names of schools that may well have been accessible through affluence or connections, then I think we come from entirely different planets here.”
Right. There is (to me, at least) a huge obvious difference between celebrating some people’s successes and requiring those who weren’t as successful to publicly “display” their lack of success. We may announce over the loudspeaker or print in the newspaper that Susie and Johnny made the honor roll - but we don’t ask Billy to wear a t-shirt proclaiming that he only got a 2.0 this quarter. We may announce that Joey ran the mile in 4:23 and won state but we don’t require the people who run 12 minute miles to proclaim their times. This is blindingly obvious to me, Hunt, MommaJ and others.
Um, not really sure a school COULD require someone to wear his/her college T - even if someone had one. These celebrations are typically very optional (and usually pretty casual). I’m sure if the school really wanted to force the issue it would post a list on it’s own, rather than have the kids sign a banner and wear a T if he/she feels like it.
No worries - no public display of lack of success seems to be going on.
What IS obvious is that some are holding other people’s personal and family circumstances up for judgement and criticism. Not sure which is the more disturbing mode of thought - that immigrant parents are backward or that someone got into his first choice due to affluence and connections. Both views are prejudiced. And calling off harmless optional celebrations that many truly enjoy just because some stereotype might actually exist out there somewhere seems pretty extreme.
Why not let the students decide? If they don’t want to participate - they won’t and the whole thing will be a bust. At their age, perhaps they can be trusted to make a few decisions for themselves on these social matters.
When my kids were in high school, there was a special awards ceremony each year. You were only invited if you were receiving an award–but you weren’t told in advance what award you were getting. Even then, I felt kind of bad for kids who were only getting the “award” that went to dozens and dozens of kids for having a GPA over a certain level (or something like that). I think it would have been even worse if it had been an assembly with required attendance for everybody.
So this can be a matter of degree. As I said above, if I were in charge of the school, I think I’d handle this by setting a date before which we ask you not to wear you college stuff–making that date essentially t-shirt day. I don’t think I’d have a special assembly for it.