graduation from school is a loss of community

how do i describe this?

this is a quick note, so it's not going to be very thorough. i'm just jotting down thoughts.

whole communities, hundreds of people, vanish in a single day, never to be seen again. they're still alive, but you no longer see them on a day-to-day basis. this is: graduation from school. it happens at the end of high school and again at the end of college. it also happens if you drop out of school.

it happens if an employer lays off hundreds or thousands of people when a business is going bankrupt. it happens when you quit a job or get fired.

it happened to me when i was a kid, because my dad had to get a new job someplace else and we moved from greensburg pa to scott depot wv. i eventually loved scott depot and i still do, but in the beginning i hated it and i hated losing all of my friends.

in the group you all had the same shared culture, the shared jokes, you watched the same movies, you hung out in the same places. it's true, there are always smaller groups within the large one. but at least you see the same people in the same building every day.

loss of community is devastating.

i am interested in the amish because their culture has continued for a long time. i don't necessarily want to build a community that directly copies the amish. but there are a few things they do that i would like to see happen more in the 'mainstream' world.

the amish community is designed to keep the community together. when the elders make a decision, they ask whether some new technology (like cars) will tear apart their community.

in the amish community, you don't have hundreds of people leaving all at once. they tend to stay in the same area for a long time. although, i did read a story about a girl who 'escaped' from the amish - torah bontrager - who said that she cried when school ended in eighth grade. she said she enjoyed school and wanted it to continue. so even though the amish community is intended to stay together in the same place, the children still feel a loss of their school community.

i'm thinking about colleges. at the end of high school, everybody goes to a different college of their own choice. colleges are far away from the students' original homes. sometimes large groups of people go to the same college, but not everyone.

(i've become very cynical about the college education system and don't feel like getting into that discussion right now - it's too long.)

colleges are supposedly 'specialized.' but you're supposed to 'choose' your college because it offers some specialized degree that other colleges don't offer, and because supposedly it's 'respected' more than other colleges. but i am questioning that idea, especially because people get a degree in one particular specialized subject, but then might never get a job in that field, and instead get an unrelated job, but they get paid more just because they have a degree.

(i still always urge people to finish school anyway. i would have at least wanted to get a degree but i had too many personal problems and could not do it. i had severe ADHD caused by eating particular foods, and i could not do my work.)

anyway, if it's true that your specific degree doesn't necessarily lead to a job in that field, then there's no reason to choose a specific college or 'specialize.' but this gets into the complicated topic of all the things i don't like about the whole education system and that's too much for me to think about right now.

the basic idea was: the end of school is a loss of community, with hundreds of people vanishing from your life all at once. it's a big deal and i take it seriously. it causes a lot of pain for people.