yes

Have to disagree with the author of the article. A complete waste of time which inflates the child's notion of self value for doing something which is a basic expectation. My wife one time insisted I take off work to attend one of these ridiculous affairs [a 3rd grade "Graduation"] ....TAKE OFF WORK....I am the sole breadwinner of the family and the source of the income to pay for the education. It never happened again. This is nothing more than an education oligarchy creating an event that takes little effort on their part and makes a splash for the parents so everyone thinks something is being accomplished.

Does anyone fail Preschool? I understand wanting to have a good time. Graduation ceremonies for Preschool seem over the top. Just my opinion.

I view this as well as graduation from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school as participation trophies. If a family wants to have a party fine - but not a school sponsored event. High school graduation might have some significance if schools administered proficiency exams. Since it is not mainstream and most kids from urban areas can barely read or write I wonder if graduation is truly meaningful. In fact, I have had employees that are graduates from the University of Michigan who could rarely but together a complete written sentence. Graduation is more about the pomp and "circumstance" than anything else. Professional degrees as well as Masters and PhD's should be acknowledged and celebrated as real achievements because they are just that. OK, I am done venting.

The easier a degree is to get, the less that it's worth. Can you "fail" Pre-School? Is it a true accomplishment? When we award mere participation as accomplishment, we are feeding the entitlement generation.

"In Atlas Shrugged the heroine Dagny Taggart encounters a young woman and her husband who have retreated from the world with their two young sons..." That's pretty powerful to me.

I have two little ones and I never understood preschool graduation celebrations blown out of proportion like they typically are. I think the kids are even confused by it, honestly. Not everything is a party. People, kids especially, need to learn to find joy in basic life. This, believe it or not, is a challenging lesson for parents these days. My kids get bored and I respond with a long, goofy list, "Do pushups, sit-ups, math, read, let's go on a hike, let's play catch..." Not everything is a bounce house and cupcakes. Jezuz...I look back on my youth when I was 7,8,9...I'd steal a piece of bacon from the table, sneak down to the bridge with my little fishing pole and spend the whole morning catching bullheads. Wanna see the bridge? She's due for replacement...

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/bridge...

so here's a funny story. Have a lifelong friend who was traumatized in preschool over cleaning out her Prang water color set. seriously, those things don't clean up well. then years later, she had dreams about it. LOL

Yes, a thousand times, yes. I even think that pre-school is going top far. It's just what used to be called baby sitting.

Edit for spelling.

I'm all for celebrations. Any reason to be happy and have fun is OK with me. Young, middle aged, old, very old, everyone in my family celebrates something at the drop of a hat. However, I don't like excessive celebrations. Those aren't really fun, they are merely saying "I have a better car or a bigger house, than you." That doesn't increase the pleasure of the celebrant in most cases unless he/she is throwing the party for themselves. As to pre-school graduations -- why not? It gives the kid a reason to look forward to a reward and gives parents and grandparents an excuse to take pictures. I'm not sure of others, but the sight and sound of little ones having a good time is often better than music. And, I love music.

The question shouldn't be about if a graduation ceremony for preschool or kindergarten is appropriate, but if the value in such an activity warrants it.

Is it appropriate in my opinion to blow hundreds of dollars celebrating something which the individual so honored will forget the next day? Nope. Unless really what I'm trying to celebrate is my own little success at parenting. But seriously, if I'm that insecure that I have to celebrate such a minor accomplishment as preschool graduation to shore up my ego, I have serious image issues and that money I blew on a fancy cake, cap and gown, etc. for my child should probably be used seeing a psychiatrist.

And let's get down to why a parent would feel a need to celebrate by proxy? It's pretty obvious really: guilt. These parents haven't been spending the time with their children that they should have so they attempt to compensate by throwing money at them. It's unfortunately a growing issue in today's day and age and is starting at a younger and younger age where parents have a child, then drop the child off at daycare while they both go off to work. I know some parents who are dropping off month-old babies to daycare.

Now please realize that I am not referring to single-parent families. Those parents rarely experience the guilt described above because they know that their first responsibility is to put bread on the table and that means a job. Or at least it does to a productive member of society.

So really, the question being posited by DRHudgins has to do with the value of parenting itself.

Isn't the only reason we have pre-school and kindergarten is that the grades 1-12 were fixed in the hierarchy of education? We could have grades 1-14 instead, with "graduations" at intervals such as third grade (now first), eighth grade, and fourteenth grade (high school). Graduation ceremonies are celebrations of achievements, running the gamut from the basic ability to think to being a valedictorian, class president, etc., but moreover a celebration of self-esteem, of setting and achieving one's own goals. Had I homeschooled any of my children, there would have been graduations, which are a system of measurements used to mark the achievement of one set of goals and the commencement of another set of tasks. The traumatization sets in when the expectation is of equality.

I didnt even have "pre-school" in a government indoctrination center or any other school- and I turned out just fine.

Kids should be allowed to study pretty much what they are interested in, not what the indoctrination center determined they "need" to learn.

Any graduation celebrations other than high school or college are just money grab schemes!

when I was in HS, and a Girl Scout, they let me run a pre-K program during a GS program called "Day Camp.". it ended up as babysitting and the children were anywhere from 2-5. anyway, we marched across corn fields and along the river. If I think about it, I'm pretty sure I should not have been in charge of 10 little ones next to a river. anyway, no one died. at the end of the two weeks, I set them up at picnic tables and let then make their own "ribbons of achievement." they were pretty clueless.