Gown and mortarboard culture

A couple of Tuesday mornings ago, I found myself at the Christ the King Parish Church in Accra.

It was the graduation mass of one of my nieces’ Junior High School (JHS) class, following the completion of their BECE at the school.

After mass, we moved across the yard to the parish hall, where a full-blown graduation ceremony took place for the excited 71 graduands, joined by their proud families and resplendent in their burgundy academic gowns with kente trimmings topped off with their mortarboards.

Prizes were awarded to deserving students and there was a speech by the class valedictorian, alongside the cutting of a graduation cake, group photographs and many more.

In the evening we retired to one of the several restaurants on the Ndambaningi Sithole Road in Labone for a celebratory family dinner. My eyebrows arched in amusement when I was told an American-style prom event was to be held a couple of days later somewhere in Accra for the newly minted JHS graduates of the school.

My niece chuckled when I told her she should be grateful she had not attended the Ankaase Local Authority JHS. It appears JHS graduation ceremonies are a private-sector indulgence.

Contemporary development

Graduation ceremonies, which were once the preserve, literally, of our universities as a manifestation of high academic achievement, have now been ‘democratised’ across the education spectrum and beyond.

Today, institutions providing practical skills training in various areas have joined in the graduation ceremony bandwagon, complete with gowns and mortarboards.

I have on several occasions come across video clips of kindergarten graduands, their oversized gowns billowing around their ankles and their mortarboards askance, while ambling around with little idea of exactly what is going on around them or its significance, bless their innocent souls.

When I was at the Ministry of Education, invitations to the minister to attend these graduations tumbled in almost every week, and on one occasion I had to travel to Cape Coast to represent him at a JHS graduation ceremony. It was an interesting experience.

How times have changed. When I completed Common Entrance at Prestea Goldfields International School in March 1980, nobody conceptualised the idea of a graduation ceremony — never mind with any trimmings.

Our head teacher, Master Appiagyei of blessed memory, simply congratulated us and wished us the best, and then we went home to wait for our results rather nervously.

Of course, we were excited that we had completed primary school and looked forward to secondary school for the next stage of our academic journey, but that was just about it.

I do not think any of my mates or contemporaries even got a bottle of Fanta or Coca-Cola from their parents to congratulate them on the completion of their Common Entrance examinations. I most certainly did not.

Rite of passage?

If I were to hazard a guess as to why graduation ceremonies at that level were literally non-existent back then, it would be that the received wisdom held that completion of primary or even secondary school was more of a stepping stone to higher things, the highest being completion of university, which of course, heralded going out into the real world and therefore was a cause for a celebration of sorts.

I remember when one of my younger brothers completed his GCE ‘A’ level examinations, marking the completion of secondary school. He asked our father to throw a party for him for his ‘feat’ — even before the results were released. The man simply scoffed at him and then ignored his audacious request.

I am not quite sure when the culture of kindergarten/primary/JHS graduation ceremonies gained root or what informed it. Perhaps the notion is that the completion of each stage marks an important rite of passage that ought to be celebrated with all the pomp that can be mustered.

High school graduations are quite a big thing in the USA, and perhaps, in line with many traditions from that country (including the celebration of Thanksgiving and Halloween), it simply seeped into this country and trickled across the education system. No wonder it is primarily a private-sector practice.

Whichever way it is, I suppose no harm is done by these graduation ceremonies. To the extent that they are a source of joy and pride to graduands and their families, why not?
I just wish the culture would spread to our public schools, while we are at it.

My dream graduation

On a personal note, I had been idly toying with the idea of a PhD for some time before I gave up a few years ago and decided that chasing money was a more worthwhile pursuit than burying my head in books and research for three years or so.

Some regret lingers though, especially since I am still chasing money after all these years without much success. Sometimes I wonder whether I should simply buy an honorary doctorate from a backwater institution somewhere in the world.

At the time I told a friend that if I ever graduated with a PhD, the whole world would hear of me during the graduation ceremony. Of course, a big party would follow, with an insistence that everyone, including my own family, call me ‘Doc’.

Maybe it is a good idea my idle ambition fizzled out and saved everyone from my cacophonous sounds.

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,
Head, Communications & Public Affairs Unit,
Ministry of Energy.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com