27th. October's quick posting but slow boil.

27.10.2009.

In about an hour's time we'll make a quick, long drive to Shah Alam for Dekna's  last graduation. It's literally the last afternoon session of the University's 71st. convocations. Each year the parents are gradually moved further and further from the proper ceremonies, in fact totally out of the actual hall. Next year they might as well just post the scrolls. What's the ceremony for ? 

This is not a day for the graduands to rejoice - they have spent all their joy when they found out their final results months ago by mail and on-line. Sure, they worked their butts out for their degrees, but they had everything going for them - the facilities, the teaching staff, all the financial assisstance in the world. Not to have some measure of success at all is really stretching things a bit. 

The convocation is for the parents. They are the ones to be congratulated, and to receive the bouquets, and not to give them. They are the ones who  scraped and went without from the time the students were only in primary schools - without sleep, without the holidays, without the dispensible little comforts of life, so that the children got enough and not distracted  from  school-work and later university-work. 

University graduates don't start from year 1 at university.  They start from year 1 at Primary School.  Sure the government build the schools and universities and staff them with teachers and syllabuses. But it's the parents who make the young minds want to succeed in education. Nobody else can do that. 

And you take away this special day of gratification from the suffering parents ? Put them in temporary tents and annexes to watch their offsprings walk across the hall to receive that scroll  on a tv monitor, having come all the way from Perlis and Sabah, and like me, Seremban ? Have a heart ! 

Break up the huge ceremony and do it at the actual campuses, not lump all together in one place and one date. Practice some of what you teach. That should be a start. Build it around the parents, for once. They've earned it. Give them this day in their life. Is that too much  to ask? 

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