Want kids to graduate? Stop talking about graduation.

When it comes to attending college or university, education has finally brought the pendulum back to a healthy center: not everyone needs to go to college.

When it comes to talking about graduation, however, we are still behind in our thinking.

Let me explain.

In my house, my wife and I rarely talk to our children about following the law. What they do hear is, “Do the right thing.” Instead of the law, we talk about what it means to be quality people of character. Why it’s important to be honest, disciplined in thought and action, to act with integrity, and why we should consider others as more important than ourselves. We encourage our kids to be quality humans, not kids who follow the law.

Why?

Because my kids can follow the law and still be bad kids who are unkind and lack integrity. Following the law is too low a standard.

So too is graduation.

When graduation becomes the goal, two things can happen.

One, we can compromise our ethics for the purpose of achieving our goal. This can look like grade manipulation, bending academic integrity, or cheating. Because if graduation is the goal, and our success and reputation are built upon it, we will do whatever it takes to achieve it.

Two, we can produce a poor product. If a student walks across the stage and receives a diploma while the entire audience sighs in relief (finally, he’s gone) or grumbles in annoyance (what a jerk she was), what was the point? If we have more kids graduating but fewer who are prepared to be kind, thoughtful, and ethical, what have we accomplished? If graduation is our goal, what - unintentionally even - will we compromise in order to achieve it?

Like children merely following the law, we can have students who have earned a degree but are jerks, dishonest, and selfish.

And if that is the case, what then is the purpose of the degree? Was graduation for them, or us?

Now, I don’t think this applies to all schools and every child who has ever or will graduate, of course not. For not only would that be unfair, but it would also be wildly untrue. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, that it hasn’t happened, or that it isn’t a constant temptation for school leaders, teachers, students, and parents. (Case in point, I once had a boss who forced a math teacher to overlook blatant cheating on a final, all because he wanted the child to graduate . . . what did we just teach that child? That teacher? That school?)

And sadly this sort of compromise happens more often than I think we’d like to admit.

Graduating is too low a bar, and if we want to change the world - truly - we need to aim much higher.

Instead of focusing on graduation, let us raise the bar of expectation to growing quality men and women who strive for integrity, live in discipline, have empathy towards others, and persevere. Let us spend more time pointing our students (and ourselves) towards a sense of pride in the things we do and the people we are, not in the achievements we collect.

I don’t teach my kids to follow the law, I teach them to be humans of integrity and character. Following the law is merely a byproduct of something greater achieved.

Like crawling before we walk, eating mushed-up bananas before we can eat a steak, or practicing simple sentences before we write our senior paper, let us place graduation where it should be: a small step in the journey of life. Graduation isn’t the goal, it is a moment of celebration that propels us forward. Or at least, it should.

For many, however, graduation is a big deal. Be it because they are the first in their family to do so or because it is the culmination of years and years of hard work, for many, walking across that stage is a monumental moment in their lives. And it should be celebrated! But again, it is not the goal. It is merely a manifestation of accomplishing a much bigger, much more important task: enduring hardship with integrity and discipline.

Standing atop the mountaintop doesn’t mean much if we don’t have the scars and sweet, aches and pains that accompany the journey. Nor does it matter most if when we summit the last peak no one is there to celebrate with us. It’s the journey that brought us there, and we achieved our goal with our character unblemished.

For as John Candy’s character states, “If we’re not enough without it, we’ll never be enough with it.”

If we want kids to graduate, let’s stop talking about graduation. Instead, let’s talk about what it means to be quality people. Let graduation be the byproduct of something greater achieved.