A Growing Trend in Pint-Size Graduations

At Hastings Ranch Nursery School in Pasadena, the “graduates” got diplomas, then Popsicles. At Calmont School in Topanga, they were sent off with paper-plate hats and a reading from Dr. Seuss. At Wagon Wheel School in Hollywood, the departing class wore crisp blue gowns and construction-paper mortarboards as “Pomp and Circumstance” welled up through the auditorium. Everywhere, minicams whirred and moms beamed. Dads dabbed away tears.

Ah, graduation! Was it inevitable that the familiar rite de passage would trickle down to the preschool and kindergarten set? And is there a serious issue lurking amid these parades of miniature graduates, ceremonies ranging from the sweetly silly to almost officious?

Well, some people do view them as the latest manifestation of the tendency to foist adult values on little children, as bad as baby Nikes and entrance exams for 4-year-olds.

“It’s a distortion of childhood,” complained Sydney Gurewitz Clemons, a San Francisco education consultant who trains Head Start teachers.

Maybe it’s “a yuppie thing,” mused a mildly critical Stephanie Glowacki of the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, a Washington group that literally wrote the book on how to make schooling “developmentally appropriate.”

Whatever the cause, sales of pint-size caps and gowns are up across the country. This year, Lakeshore, a chain of 12 educational supply stores, couldn’t keep enough of its tiny $14.95 white cotton gowns and cardboard mortarboards in stock.

“More and more schools in general are getting into caps and gowns that didn’t used to before,” said Tim Coffey, a salesman for Collegiate Cap and Gown, the largest purveyor of academic robes in the country.

It’s not only the preschool set. Elementary schools are holding formal graduations for fifth- and sixth-graders moving on to middle school. Middle schools are dressing up their eighth-graders to mark the passage to high school. “There is a sense among parents that these transitions are important,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert on early childhood education at UCLA. The ceremonies, she suggests, may help parents quell fears about the quality of their kids’ schools and whether their children will be able to compete in the future.

The phenomenon appears to know no socioeconomic bounds. It’s as popular among prosperous parents as among the less well-heeled. Cap-and-gown ceremonies are common in the federal Head Start program, for instance. Gurewitz Clemons, the Bay Area consultant, says putting children through the paces of a formal graduation at the tender age of 5 serves as much-needed positive reinforcement in poor communities, where finishing preschool can be a significant milestone.

So, yes, it’s possible to debate the significance of the junior graduations. But for all the talk about what’s developmentally appropriate, it is impossible to go to one without joining in the ooos and aaahhhs as 3 1/2-foot-tall kids skip and stumble up to a podium or chew on their tassles.

At Wagon Wheel, where tuition runs $600 a month, the graduating kindergartners rehearsed for a month before donning their hand-made gowns and filing on stage last week to perform three of their favorite songs--”Rockin’ Robin,” “De Colores” and “The Goodbye Song.” Here, the notion of a formal graduation is hardly a ‘90s invention--the school’s been doing it for two decades. “It just really gives them a lot of self-confidence and memories that they completed a whole year of preschool,” explained Wagon Wheel director Ruth Segal.

Hastings Ranch, in contrast, handed out diplomas for the first time this year.

“Last year they didn’t acknowledge the preschoolers except to have them stand up for a second. That just seemed a little sad to me,” said parent Sara Landis. “I thought it would be nice if they got something special.”

So a few of the parents got together and designed a fancy scroll to tie up with ribbon. Director Karen Brownell shook the graduates’ hands as she passed out the diplomas, which accorded them “all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.”

And what might those rights and privileges be? Landis’ son, Anthony, 5, exuberant in clean overalls and a blue T-shirt, shrugged his shoulders. He hadn’t a clue. Neither did Jack Brierty, also 5, whose chief worry throughout the blessedly short ceremony was that he would step on one of his classmates on the way up to get the diploma.

But he clambered successfully through the small bodies and got his certificate. Then the best part--those cherry Popsicles.