Graduating Beyond What's Real
This weekend is graduation, when the senior students at our Onteora High School receive diplomas and take new, different steps out into what those of us long past such stages like to call the "real world." There will be speeches a-plenty - by students addressing their hopes for a better world, or starting the process of reminiscence that will eventually become nostalgia. And by adults bent on congratulating their former charges, and giving them a few last words of wisdom that might move them in a direction they want to see us move in.
Graduations, by their very definition, are emotional in character, full to the brim with hosts of conflicting messages, intentions and memories.
There's a great statement that might capture the occasion, were it summoned. In his grand novel about the epochal shifts a small American community makes as it evolves from a small town to an industrialized city, The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington has a middle-aged character address the defiance of his long-beloved woman friend's son.
"If only forty knew how to tell twenty what forty would be like," he says. "And if only twenty knew how to listen to what forty had to offer..."
A few weeks back, these issues arose during the nation's college graduations, when a number instances arose that highlighted the increasing partisanship of our nation and society, instead of its cohesive wish (and will) for an ever-bettering progressive life. In school after school, invited speakers found themselves booed by audiences who didn't want to hear their talks of peace, their personal fears and aspirations. And in publication after publication, the graduation speeches that ended up getting the most emphasis were from members of the current Bush Administration, all using their graduation platforms to push forth their strengthening new policy of Empire.
Many commented on the rudeness of the speakers for not taking into account the feelings of their audiences. But such commentary misses the mark of what our educations have traditionally embraced: a willingness to listen to dissent, to discern rightness by the might of our own learning, to always strive for educated opinions, and to respect the integrity of an artist's, or scientist's, or academic's intentions without always running to the popularity barometer of the entertainment world for reference.
There was a time when education, on all levels, was a world unto itself... not about reality as much as it was about the highest ideals of philosophy, science, culture and history. We removed ourselves, for a spell, from the everyday... so we could then hook into the eternal. And we learned, along the way, that the eternal included both the right to dissent, and the need to empathize. And that our democratic ideal involved ties to past triumphs of similar ideas, from Greece and Rome and the might of the British Empire to the American, French, Mexican and even Russian revolutions.
Does anyone else remember the lessons we were once taught about the dangers of all empires? About what happens went dissent, when the intellectual element in our society, is mocked and reviled by the public, egged on by those who have gained their power from their popular vote?
Let's hope our young men and women, graduating this weekend, can build a "real world" for themselves that's closer to the ideals they're still in the process of learning, rather than the false reality they're being fed by our entertainment media. And that in doing so, they'll be able to avoid the partisanship that's started infiltrating everything from our Little League sports to our political debate, from our ability to listen to our willingness to learn.
New directions have been offered this rising generation. It is up to them to take it or forge their own path into a better future. It's a tricky juncture. But we hold the greatest hope that they will choose what's right for not only themselves, but for their children and parents, as well.
Hats off!