Graduation rituals becoming festivals
Students, left, serve tea to teachers during a traditional graduation ceremony in token of their gratitude, in Naju, South Jeolla Province, Wednesday. / Yonhap
By Chung Hyun-chae
Wild graduation rituals at middle and high schools, including tearing uniforms and hurling eggs or flour at each other, are fading away.
Such graduation traditions have been a national headache every February during graduation season.
There have routinely been reports around this time of graduating students engaged in unruly rituals from getting naked to staging violent scenes.
Since 2011, the Ministry of Education has posted police officers at schools to prevent deviant behavior during and after graduation ceremonies.
In a bid to make graduation more festive and trouble-free, this year, the education ministry called for cooperation from schools nationwide to organize various events during graduation ceremonies that students, parents and communities can enjoy together.
“We are focusing on creating sound graduation culture by cooperating with regional education offices and local police,” an education ministry official said.
“With more schools holding festival-like graduation ceremonies for their students in recent years, many ugly scenes have vanished,” he added.
In line with the efforts to make school graduations special and to find the true meaning of graduation, many schools initiated new events, with students and teachers devising their plans for their ceremonies together.
For example, Deokjeok School, a K-12 school in Incheon, offered graduation gowns to students for the ceremony on Feb. 6.
“The students told me that they felt special with the gowns,” Kim Hee-jeong, an English teacher at the school, said.
The school’s elementary, middle and high school students also devised performances to congratulate the seniors upon their graduation.
“Thanks to these kinds of events, the graduation ceremony had a festive mood without tears,” Kim said.
For the 178 students who graduated from Jungni Middle School in Daejeon on Feb. 3, the school principal wrote handwritten letters to each one of the graduates.
“I cannot forget memorable moments with my students,” the School Principal Yun Byung-min said.
Other teachers also prepared video clips for the students so they could look back on their three years in the middle school and share memories with each other.
Graduation ceremonies at other schools also resembled festivals in which students took part in meaningful events.
Some schools organized a charity event where graduating students purchased large volumes of rice instead of bouquets of flowers and donated them to welfare centers.
In case of emergency, the education ministry plans to reinforce police patrols around favorite haunts of students in bustling places near schools until next week.
Each school also notified all parents that any students involved in abusive rituals are subject to punishment for school violence.