Germans tend to make a huge production out of children first day at grade school. The whole transition from kindergarten to grade school is a lengthy, expensive, and dramatic process.
It begins weeks before school is set to start, with saying goodbye to the kindergarten children and teachers: special sleepovers, farewell parties, present getting (to the children) and present giving (to the teachers and staff), etc. Then there is all the shopping you have to do.
The proper clothes must be found for the first day school celebrations: the various school supplies – easy as pie: the perfect school bag from a large selection of models from the traditional leather to the glitzy plastic with popular television characters printed on them: but, most importantly, you have to buy the reverted school cone. This cone, which is often almost as tall as the first grade pupils themselves, is to be filled with candies, gifts, and other marvellous things on the first day of school. Imagine a piñata in the form of a huge upside-down dunce cap. Many children buy their school cones months beforehand and then hang the empty cone up in their rooms, waiting for the Big Day.
They take their cones with them for the school celebrations, but, because the cone is covered, they have to wait until all the opening day celebrations are over and they are back at home before they can see what is inside.
The Big Day consists of an elaborate First Day School ceremony: including performances from the older grade school classes for the new grade one pupils, and speeches from the principal and other noteworthy individuals. They all welcome the children into the school in much the same way that the giant Mickey Mouse figures welcome the public to Disney World; with smiles and promises of all the wonderful things to come.
The children’s homeroom teachers then call off their class list with the names of their children and they all march around the auditorium, which is packed with parents, siblings, grandparents, godmothers and godfathers, ersatz aunts and uncles (the list is long). The children try to hold their heads up high and not drop their heavy school cones.
I am sure you are all waiting for the punch line of this story. Or perhaps, those parents of five or six year olds already have a suspicion of what is come… all this build-up, masses of expectations on the part of these children… Major Disappointment. I stood in the auditorium, with tears running down my face, at both my children’s first day celebrations, marvelling at the children’s innocence and dignity, and I wondered if all the theatrics weren’t just some cruel joke we were playing on the wee ones.
Yet, I put this thought away, as I made our way home with the new first grader and all the relatives and friends who were coming over for coffee and cake (yes, that too!) and to watch the child open up the school cone and all the other presents they received. How could the reality of going to school possibly live up to all of this?
It can't of course, but this ritual is not about the going to school itself, it is a rite of passage. The first step in growing up.
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