Easy as ABC...

As a European, I was brought up in a time and culture which tended to downplay - and simultaneously trumpet - "achievement". My early education stressed the "three R's", to the virtual exclusion of everything else. Rote learning was the order of the day. Failure was excoriated. Peer pressure to "succeed" was intense.

It was undeniably elitist. And it doubtless resulted in considerable self-esteem problems for many later in life, myself included. The system and the cultural context did, however, establish literacy and numeracy, for example, as cultural imperatives. Illiteracy was a source of shame, and that sense of shame engendered a determination in the "developmentally challenged" to overcome the obstacles to joining the literacy club.

The hierarchically imposed "need to succeed" continued through primary to secondary and tertiary education. The verb and noun "graduate" was reserved exclusively for those who "earned" a degree from an institute of higher learning. To be a "graduate" implied a certain breadth of knowledge, combined with a depth of learning within one particular area.

When I immigrated to the US, my first - and for a long time my only - job was teaching Traffic School. Recalcitrant offenders would muster in a faceless hotel room at 8:00 on a Saturday morning. Some would doze throughout the day, despite my best endeavors to transform the California Vehicle Code into a source of enjoyable and stimulating learning.

At 4:00 that afternoon, on payment of $19.95, the participants would receive a scrap of paper which proclaimed them "graduates" of the program.

I realized that to "graduate with a diploma" was synonymous with "receiving a certificate of attendance". Five-year-olds "graduate" from kindergarten ("children's garden"); my sister's dog - a lovable but unruly mutt - "graduated" from dog training school (and still dry-humps anything that moves); young people "graduate" from high school; and slightly older young people "graduate" from college or university.

My quibble here is not with the meaning of the word. (I find its usage slightly irksome, in much the same way I find annoying California estate agents' selling of "homes" rather than "houses" - which, in my lexicon, are structures waiting for inhabitants to make them "homes".)

Rather, my concern is that the acquisition of a piece of paper - a high school "diploma" for example - no longer seems to carry with it the implication of any learning, ability or competence.

In a country which perceives itself as a bastion of freedom and democracy, both here and abroad (we shall, for the moment, set aside the demonization of the Sandinistas and the elevation of Generals Pinochet and Noriega), the dramatization of the mundane has reached its ultimate in the award of "diplomas" to "graduates" who have not been required to demonstrate any learning; whose sole "achievement" has been "attendance" at a specified number of classes.

In any society, the existence of illiteracy must be a source of concern. In a democracy, illiteracy strikes at the basis of freedom. Who needs to ban or burn books if no-one can read them?

And yet a high school diploma, in America as it enters the 21st century, is no guarantee of literacy, let alone its oft-ignored cousin, numeracy. The fact that increasing numbers of college entrants need "remedial tuition" (read the "three R's") is a damning indictment of our educational system, its administrators, our lawmakers and the greater society.

Attendance is mundane. Learning is laudable. Our culture has decided, consciously or no, to ignore the spirited interaction of inspired teaching and the insatiable curiosity of youth. Instead, it rewards - with spurious "diplomas" - the simple act of appearing in class, with no comment on the quality or depth of learning.

The root of the celebration of the mundane lies in the cultural denial of failure.