Your Graduation Education

With graduation season underway (North Haven High Schoo graduation is on Friday, June 24), we thought we’d offer you a crash course in the facts, history and trends of this milestone. Put on your thinking cap!

Gifts

OK, so we’ll start with the real reason people get excited about graduation. It’s not the pride of having accomplished years of hard work; it’s the cold, hard cash. According to www.graduationcardsshop.com money is the No. 1 gift amongst today’s graduates.

The Graduation Cap

The graduation cap began as pileus or a close-fitting, brimless hat worn by the ancient Romans and copied from the Greek sailor’s hat called the pilosaccording to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"The hat was again popular during the Renaissance, especially in Italy, when it was square or rounded and made of black or red velvet or felt. Thezucchetto and the biretta, worn by some orders of clergy, developed from the pileus," according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Academia eventually adopted the use of the biretta or pileus and the University of Oxford was the first to have graduates wear a square cap or mortarboard.

According to Academicapparel.com, graduate cap colors have certain distinctions based upon area of study. For a detailed account of the history of the cap and other academic wear visit their website.

In other cap trivia, in 1912, the US Naval Academy lays claim to inventing the cap toss.

Pomp and Circumstance

According to an NPR interview, the origins of the academic use of the song Pomp and Circumstance, composed by Sir Edward Elgar, came to be in 1905 when the musician received an honorary decorate from Yale University. The song, composed in 1901 and named after a line in Shakespeare's Othello ("Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!") wasn't originally intended for graduations according to NPR. “Elgar's march was used for the coronation of King Edward VII.”

Commencement Speakers’ Advice

You can check out check out these ten noteworthy commencement speakers' speeches on Education-Portal.com, which includes advice from Apple's Steve Jobs, author J.K. Rowling and the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. But the best advice, we think, comes from President George W. Bush who told Yale University graduates in 2001 at their 300th Commencement: "C students – you too can be president."

Famous Dropouts

It’s a shame to pay all that money and drop out of school, but with graduation on the mind, we must consider those who didn’t make the grade but still went on to lead successful careers. You can pursue names at your leisure at Collegedropouthalloffame.com, but here our some of our favorites from the website:

Bryan Adams, singer, songwriter. High school dropout.

Troy Aikman, Superbowl-winning football quarterback, TV sports commentator. In 2009, he finally graduated from UCLA, 20 years after leaving college to play in the National Football League. Aikman had promised his mother, when he left school just two courses shy of a degree, that he would return and finish. In 2009, at the age of 42, he finally fulfilled that commitment, earning A's in his last two courses, thus earning a bachelor's degree in sociology.

Glenn Beck, radio and TV political commentator, bestselling book author. Enrolled at Yale University for one class but quickly dropped out because he "spent more time trying to find a parking space" than in class.

Winston Churchill, British prime minister, historian, artist. Rebellious by nature, he generally did poorly in school. Flunked sixth grade. After he left Harrow, he applied to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, but it took him three times before he passed the entrance exam. He graduated 8th out of a class of 150 a year and a half later. He never attended college.

Ellen DeGeneres, comedienne, actress, talk show host. Dropped out of the University of New Orleans. As she noted in an interview with Us Magazine, "I didn't go to no college."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist. Dropped out of Princeton University.

Bill Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, one of the richest men in the world, philanthropist. Dropped out of Harvard after his second year to work with Paul Allen on the venture that became Microsoft. As he noted, “I realized the error of my ways and decided I could make do with a high school diploma.”

Horace Greeley, newspaper editor and publisher, U.S. congressman, presidential candidate, co-founder of the Republican Party. Dropped out of high school.

John F. Kennedy, U.S. president. He dropped out of Princeton University in 1935 but eventually graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1940.

Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police of Washington, DC. A 14-year-old pregnant high school dropout.

Steve Madden, shoe designer. Dropped out of college to sell shoes on Long Island.

Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actor. Only finished a few grades. Could only read at the fourth-grade level until a friend taught him how to read better when he was a struggling actor in New York City.

William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling.

Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, interior designer, leader of the Prairie School of architecture. Voted as the greatest American architect of all time by the American Institute of Architects. Attended a high school in Madison, Wisconsin, but apparently never graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin as a special student and took classes part-time for two semesters. He left school without getting a degree. He left to work at an architectural firm in Chicago, Illinois.

Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook. Dropped out of Harvard to continue working on the social networking website he founded in his dorm room in 2004. Facebook has more than 300 million users.