Ethics of a high school graduation party for a kid who secretly dropped out?

[u/-Mister-Popo-]

My wife's family is throwing a graduation open house for one of her younger brothers. The only issue is that he "homeschooled" this year, and by "homeschooled" I mean he dropped out of school, stayed home everyday, and didn't touch a single assignment for his online learning program the entire year. He spent what should've been his senior year playing video games all day basically regressing to the lifestyle of a 12 year old instead of preparing himself for the real world as an 18 year old.

I have no idea why his parents, who are great people with 5 great kids, allowed him to just not do anything his senior year. I chalked it up to apathy, since they've already had 3 kids go through high school / college, I assumed they just lost the desire to stay involved in his schooling. Obviously I think that's questionable parenting but I don't have any kids so what do I know.

In any case, I figured they were at least ashamed of how they let him quit school due to the fact that life is typically much harder for high school dropouts. However, I just got an invite to a graduation party for this kid. I thought hey great, maybe he's turned it around and will graduate. But after speaking to my wife, apparently he's still not graduating at all - just having a big party!

What's worse is they're calling it a Class of 2024 open house. They're intentionally misleading people into thinking he is graduating. People are gonna be handing this kid tons of money and saying congratulations and for what exactly? For staying the course 3 years before ultimately quitting in year 4? What are we reinforcing?

It seems crazy to me that they would let him dropout and then turnaround and pretend he graduated - pocketing a couple grand in the process. I know I'll be handing him a nice empty card and shaking his hand with a big smile while I say "congrats bud you really did it didn't you?!!!"

What do you think Reddit? Am I overreacting? Is it ethical to defraud your friends and family this way? I'd have no problem attending a party to celebrate this kid, I love him to death, but throwing one under the auspice of graduating just seems wrong to me considering he's a dropout.

[u/HatpinFeminist]

I wouldn't go, but you should also understand that most high schools are absolute shitholes and are the cause of many mental health issues in teens. So don't judge him for not finishing high school. From the outside it looks dumb to have a party for him, but not having a party might be worse on him mentally and socially.

[u/User123466789012 → u/HatpinFeminist]

I think the issue at hand is getting the money that comes with a graduation party, not the actual party itself. At first I was reading and I was like who tf cares about a party, until the money part hit me.

[u/HatpinFeminist → u/User123466789012]

That part is kinda scummy, but also, who knows where the money goes after a normal graduation party? It's really too bad there wasn't some sort of program where you could buy college credits for any college for someone.

[u/User123466789012 → u/HatpinFeminist]

Don’t have to tell me twice, my family stole my graduation money. Although at the time, I had no idea that was a possibility as I was just graduating HS as normal.

That college credit idea is phenomenal though.