It was, as these ceremonies should be, a pageant. Prayers were recited in four languages (English, Spanish, Tagalog and Tenagit). Families whooped in several more. The principal, Charlene Szumilas, was brief: be generous, work hard, do us honor. The valedictorian, Abraham Cruz, expressed gratitude to his family and his school; next fall, he’s headed for Notre Dame. A recent grad sang the mandatory “Wind Beneath My Wings.” As each member of the class of ‘97 marched toward Brother Philip, it was difficult to maintain eye contact. The beaming and the welling up kept getting in the way.
It is graduation season, one of those rare occasions of pride and accomplishment that can still be enjoyed across all demographic lines. It’s easy to forget in post-GI Bill America that only about a quarter of the nation’s adults hold a college degree; as a public rite of passage that spans the generations, nothing compares to high-school-commencement exercises. And for families, however bruised, unconventional or simply traditional, it’s both takeoff and landing– children in robes, on the cusp of adulthood, boys with Jordanesque ear studs, girls balancing on towering platform shoes, clutching the arms of parents who are about to set them loose on the world, whether they like it or not. By the best estimates there are 2.6 million members of the class of ‘97. The most famous, Chelsea Clinton, received her diploma at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., last Friday, an event at once so uplifting and so egalitarian that the First Parents were allowed to enjoy the occasion without benefit of a press conference or a process server.
These ceremonies take place at a time when high-school diplomas have never been so necessary or so insufficient. The economy has changed radically. The era when high-school students could drop out and still find decent work in factories or farms is long dead. So the prospects are poor for the 800,000 or so kids who entered high school in 1998 but aren’t graduating this year. Not that this year’s diplomas, however hard-earned, can be comfortably viewed as anything more than a baton pass in the educational relay race. Workers with a high-school education have long made less than those with a college degree; according to federal statistics the gap has widened in recent years. About 60 percent of the class of ‘97 expect to start college next fall.
However vivid this springtime optimism, it’s only a brief respite from the ongoing problems in American educatiofi. The critical litany is all too familiar: standards are too low, and grades are too high. Legislatures debate whether publicly funded colleges should spend their days doing remedial work for kids with high-school degrees. Collectively the nation’s school buildings are in dreadful repair. They are both overcrowded and underused. New brain research teaches the importance of early education; lip service is paid but little else. That’s all true and will be again when schools open in the fall.
But it’s spring and, for just a moment, time to enjoy a breather from the justified criticism, time to tell different stories. Consider.the demographic changes felt so acutely in some schools. Compared with graduating classes two decades ago, the number of whites is down, while Hispanic and Asian populations continue to grow. What do these numbers mean for the class of ‘97? Look at the yearbook pictures of Stuyvesant High School, one of four fiercely competitive New York City public high schools that admit only on the basis of an admissions test. In 1964, well before he put a foot in his mouth, spinmeister Dick Morris was captain of Stuyvesant’s debate team; its members were all white and all male. This year the coed team (national champions for the seventh consecutive season) is led by the children of immigrants from Bangladesh, Korea and Israel. “My age group has reached a genuine post-racial consciousness,” says team president Reihan Salam, 17. His ambition: to be a “rabble-rouser” in the cause of economic justice.
Stuyvesant, like Walnut Hills in Cincinnati or Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria, Va., are exceptional places. More typical is Venice High School, just a few mfies inland from the famous Muscle Beach along the Pacific Ocean. “We in public schools feel very isolated,” says principal Bud Jacobs. Schools like his have most of the kids-nationwide a steady 87 percent go to public school-but take most of the trouble and blame, too. Carrying a walkie-talkie, Jacobs patrols his 29-acre campus during class breaks, set on keeping his kids safe. (The emergency buttons on his handset read FIRE, FIGHT, WEAPON, TRESPASSER, DRUGS.) Venice High loses almost 40 percent of its freshman class before graduation; one in four has “limited English proficiency,” and one in three is poor enough to get government-funded meals.
Determined to survive, Venice developed a foreign-language magnet program that attracts kids from across Los Angeles and each year sends a few dozen to the most prominent colleges in the country. More impressive, relying mostly on students drawn from the neighborhood polyglot population, the school has won the past two National Science Bowl competitions. A kid like Gregorio Mendez, the son of a day laborer who left Mexico four years ago, sees Venice for exactly what it is: a chance. He graduates this month with a certificate of merit in English lit and plans to attend a community college in the fall. “I was happy here,” he says. “I have a good opportunity to be somethmg.” That’s the button Bud Jacobs wants to push.
Despite the changing hue of the class of ‘97, fully integrated schools are still rare. Whites have continued to push outward into exurbia and the pioneering reaches of the sun belt; multiculturalism is a matter for the curriculum committee, not the welcoming committee. For Southfield, one of the inner-ring suburbs of Detroit, this pattern has meant that Southfield High went from 88 percent white 20 years ago to 86 percent black this year. But the proms are still outrageous, and most kids still go to college (if anything, the number has gone up). Senior Wyatt Schrock heads for the University of Michigan in August. He spent last summer in a business-education camp at Northwestern University. “I was with kids from all over the nation, and I was more prepared than most,” he says. “I have no complaints about Southfield High.”
For all the educational fads the class of ‘97 has had to endure, and for the diversity it embodies, there seems to be one constant in its success: someone or some institution told its kids they could make it. In Chicago, Holy Trinity’s kids, as they have for 87 years, come from the working class. The only important difference is that instead of selling kielbasa at the fair to make tuition; mothers now sell tortillas. Brother Philip braces them with a grip anda @ every morning. The English Department pushes them into speech and essay contests. Every scholarship won is posted and announced to the underclassmen. The kids–more than 90 percent of whom go on to college–get the message. The basketball season ended abruptly two months ago with a difficult loss. After the mourning ended in the locker room, senior Richard Brown turned to the others and said, “Let’s get out of here and go make something of ourselves.” He will, and with any luck, so will the rest of the class of'97.
Your guidance counselor was right: the more you learn, the more you earn. A look at graduates and their incomes:
High-school grads 1979 1997* Total 3.1mil. 2.6 mil. Going to college 49.3% 62% White 82% 72% Black 12 13 Hispanic 4 10 Asian 1 5 Native American 1 1 Earnings# 1979 1995 WITHOUT A HIGH-SCHOOL EDUCATION Males $29,723 $23,338 Females 17,093 16,319 HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATES Males 37,508 32,708 Females 21,473 21,961 COLLEGE GRADUATES Males 55,751 61,717 Females 30,915 87,924 *ESTIMATES. 1979 DEMOGRAPHIC DATA ARE PROJECTIONS FOR 1978. NUMBERS MAY NOT ADD TO 100 DUE TO ROUNDING. [#]AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS IN 1995 DOLLARS. SOURCES: NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS; BLS; CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY, CENSUS BUREAU
