Our Fearless Leader will stand behind a podium in a week and one day to deliver a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. Some disapproveof his being selected to give this speech because they disagree with policy proposals he has made regarding reproductive rights.
Three weeks after that speech, I'll be in a lecture hall at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. I'll be giving the faculty address at a high school graduation. Each year at the high school where I teach, the senior class votes on which faculty member they would like to address them during their graduation ceremony.
This year, that's me.
The purpose of this diary is to open a dialogue about graduation speeches. Do they matter? How do you determine a good one from a bad one? A memorable one from a forgetable one? Do we even remember anything from the graduation speeches? Are they an important part of the ritual, or a waste of time on the way to walking across the stage?
And, to address two additional questions:
- What should President Obama talk about in his 1 week from tomorrow?
- What should I talk about in mine next month?
My Ideas For My Speech
I've been a high school teacher for 8 years. I have taught AP Psychology, US history, global history, media literacy, and micro and macroeconomics (as well as more than a dozen elective topics from creative writing and stage improvisation to campaign politics and gourmet cooking).
This year, I've resigned my position in order to have time to research and write a doctoral dissertation at Teachers College. I suspect my having announced I'm leaving the school at the end of this year has influenced the student body's selection of faculty speaker.
I have some ideas for my speech:
- A meta-theme on graduation as a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.
- A subtheme challenging them to ask themselves what they will do with their education, rather than simply, and more easily, asking what their education will do for them. Some of my students will have spent thousands of dollars on standardized test prep, private college admissions counselors, and campus visits in multiple states (in a few cases, multiple countries). This current milieu naturally leads them (and their parents) to think first about what their education will do for them. I want to flip that expectation on its head. As their teacher, I want to know what they're going to do with what I have given, and expected of, them.
- One of my mentors, the New York State Commissioner of Education in the 80's and early 90's, Thomas Sobol, once wrote,
We are capable of great things when we remember who we are and what we are about.
I've loved that thought ever since the first time I read it. It speaks to me in education, it speaks to me in politics, it speaks to me as a father, and in every way. I want to invite the audience not only to celebrate these students' accomplishments that day, but to make sure that none of them go to bed that night until someone has asked them who they are, and what they are about. As far as I am concerned, that is the real final exam. Not the SAT, or the state graduation tests, or the Advanced Placement marathons many will have run by that time.
But, what about that other speech? The one on May 17th?
My Ideas For President Obama's Speech
I find it really interesting that a minority of interested people are protesting President Obama's invitation and acceptance. I remember reading J.K. Rowling's graduation speechat Harvard (a masterpiece, in my opinion) and the student body interviews that followed it. I was a little surprised at the time that several graduating seniors were thoroughly incensed that she was their marquee speaker. Several didn't think she was worthy of the stage she had been given, that Harvard graduations were the speeches of world leaders, Nobel prize winners, and "important people."
This now serves to remind me there will be people who disapprove, no matter who is speaking and no matter what they say/said.
This brings me to Barack Obama.
Should he speak about religion and/or reproductive rights at Notre Dame? I believe this is the big question concerning his speech as this is the source of protest. He either addresses and explains himself, makes his case (which he has done at every turn, by they way), or he avoids it and misses a hot opportunity to clear something up for everyone.
- I believe he should speak about both, but in a particular context. If I was advising, I'd ask him to consider addressing these graduates, and their family and friends, about the importance of the separation of the branches of government and therefore the importance of his selection of a replacement for Justice Souter. We may not get to know the judicial predispositions of the appointee, but we should know those of the person making the decision, and this would be an excellent and appropriate opportunity to clarify them. A true piece of history for those Notre Dame graduates. Give them a little something to which every future historian and columnist would refer when writing about the judicial philosophy and decisions of the Obama administration. Agree or disagree, they could say, "I was there."
- This would be an excellent opportunity to point out that he took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, with his hand on a bible; not an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the bible, with his hand on a Constitution. (I first encountered that idea in a diary here at DKos. I can't remember the diarist, but if it was your idea, props to you!)
- I would also like to hear more about public service following graduation, these students' obligations to their country and countrymen and women. That we are not a nation of individuals, each only looking out for himself or herself. But that we are a community, and that members of communities look out for each other, even when they disagree.
When my neighbor's house burns in the night, I do not stop to ask him who he voted for; I do not stop to ask him if he knew he could not afford his mortgage or whether he was misled by predatory lenders; I do not stop to ask him about his political stance on reproductive rights.
I pick up the phone and call 911. To help my neighbor. I do not allow his answer to any of those questions prevent me from helping when my help is needed and I am capable of giving it.
Some of us are more capable than others, and it is ironic that some of the most capable are also the most reluctant.
(Now, personally, do I give a dollar to every homeless person I meet? No, I don't. Sometimes I'm the one in need of help.)
That's a little bit of the speech I'd like to hear from my President.
What speech would you like to hear?
From either of us?