Mr. Chairman, Honourable Guests, Parents, Teachers, and Fellow Graduates
I am deeply honoured to deliver to you the valedictory address on behalf of the Iraduating class of 1964.
Tonight, after twelve years of formal education, we graduate. Our school years, with their joys, sorrows, successes, failures, and friendships have been eventfull years. We look back on some experiences with pride and on others with regret. Many of our recollections of high school days are ones we share with others - the victories of our school teams, the panic of exams, the ridiculous fads we followed. But some of our memories of school life are personal ones - the effect of a certain teacher on us, the ideas of a particular writer, the excitement of seeing a fact from a textbook, become real in a science laboratory. We have established friendships here which we shall cherish throughout our lives. Tonight is perhaps, the last time we shall be together as a group of friends. We are here with mixed emotions of joy, satisfaction and apprehension, knowing that we soon face a division of family and companions, and a marked change in our comfortable, accustomed way of life.
Tomorrow we go our separate ways. Some of us will find ourselves caught up in the excitement and challenge of a university, a nursing school, or a technological institute. Others of us will immediately take our place in the working world. But whether we find jobs or go on to further formal education, we shall be moving from an atmosphere of rigid timetables and nightly homework, into a sea of new freedom. We may feel we are in beyond our depth and aren't able to swim too well. We shall likely require several years to realize that the purpose of our education has been to teach us - not what to think, but how to think. We have been given the opportunity of an education chiefly so that we can know about and care for the world and the people in this world.
We are graduates in an age when an enormous stress is beig placed on education Almost every day of our school lives we heard that we must stay in school if we expected success in life, and that we must strive for high marks if we are to amount to anything. Of course there is a great deal of truth in this advice. But I believe that we may be in danger of becoming too preoccupied with this narrow excellence, and with achieving material success that we may relegate to second place art and beauty and ethics and people who have not attained to our standards of practical success. If we ever look on our education chiefly as a means of becoming socially and financially successful we have defeated its purpose. If some people fall short of their aspirations, or lack certain talents and opportunities, does it mean that these people are second class citizens? I hope that this worthwhile emphasis on education will not make us oblivious of the fact that whether people have few or many successes, they
do have character traits which mold a better world. We must keep in mind that there are personal qualities and fields of endeavor which are of value, although they are of no great practical use. Our education will make us happiest and most productive when we become concerned with what is truly good, rather than what it might cost us.
May I leave with you this thought of Thoreau's - "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined in common hours."
