Promotion... Again?

Do you ever look around at the world and see things that seem crazy and yet everyone seems to be going along with it? And you think... I can't be the only one seeing this. I can't be the only one that thinks that. Either everyone goes along with really absurd things sometimes or I really have a very different perspective than most people.

I teach at a middle school (7th and 8th grade). Every year, the 8th graders have a "promotion" ceremony. This is what it looks like. They take their final exams a week before the 7th graders. So let's say it's a 10 week term. 8th graders take their final exams on Thursday and Friday of week 9. So for all of week 10, they have no academic work. Their grades are turned in and it's up to the staff to keep them somehow busy. Why even come to school? Well they have the fear of God put into them by the administration about the forbidden "unexcused absence" (which just means the school wouldn't get paid... though the state stops counting ADA - average daily attendance - on April 15th, but I digress). So week 10 was a 4 day week due to Memorial Day on Monday. Tuesday, they have promotion practice. Well we have 4 teams promoting and they each need about an hour. So that leaves 5 hours for teachers to figure out something to do with them. On Wednesday, they go on a field trip. But many stay behind and it's 6 hours to figure out what to do with them. On Thursday, they promote. They buy expensive, fancy, often inappropriate-dress-code-violating dresses and shoes. They get their hair and makeup and nails done. Families take the day off work and desperately seek coveted and limited tickets. And all to see their kids move from the 8th grade to the 9th grade when it's nearly impossible not to move from the 8th grade to the 9th grade, no matter how hard you try. In addition to this, many 7th graders play in the band during all 4 promotions and so they miss their final exams on Thursday and have to find a way to make them up. Which usually means a teacher giving makeup exams on their prep the next day. Then 8th graders are signed out by their parents and don't return to school on Friday, because now it's apparently ok to have an unexcused absence.

Is it really worth it? Is this really what parents want? Everyone I talk to seems to think it's absurd. But they all say you can't do away with it because people would go crazy. And it's not just 8th grade promotion. No. There's preschool graduation and kindergarten promotion/graduation and 6th grade graduation and high school graduation. At some point doesn't the frequency of these events diminish their meaning? I'm not trying to be a total scrooge. Celebrating life's milestones is nice. But you can't NOT move from the 8th grade to the 9th grade. Trust me. Well it's really hard. And if people don't like these things, the only way to get rid of them is to act as a group. Because you can't just be the one parent that sits your kid out. Then they feel really bad that they've missed this artificially created special occasion. Hallmark creates holidays just to sell cards. I can't figure out who got the promotion/graduation snowball rolling. I just wonder if I'm the only one that thinks it's all a bit too much.