School Version 2.0 - To the Graduates

I have been speaking to everyone this year about the many changes that have taken place over the years in the field of education. While I have been speaking to everyone young and old, in school or out school, many of my remarks have been directed towards parents and other stakeholders. Today, I would like to direct my remarks directly to our MOST important stakeholders—our students—specifically the graduates of the class of 2008.

The changes that have occurred since the day you were born are overwhelming. When you were born the Soviet Union and East Germany still existed.. Cell phones were carried in bags, and the first web page was still months away. The average price of gas was $1.10 and a personal computer, which had a tenth the power of a modern cell phone, no hard drive and only one megabyte of ram sold for around 1200 dollars. Your generation has been in many ways the first generation to be truly “high tech”. The information being gained by society multiplies literally by the minute. So what does this mean to you as you head out into the oft-mentioned “real-world”? To fully understand what your future holds for you, I’d like to take you back to English class for one more lesson.

Poet Robert Frost wrote in his 1920 poem “The Road Not Taken”:

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

We have taken you on a thirteen-year journey, but the traveling has just started. Our goal is to get you to the fork in the road where you now stand, and now the rest is up to you. The decisions you make over the next few months and years will determine where your journey leads. It would be easy to take the road that seems shortest; this will be the path that many will take- but we all know that shortcuts can leave us lost. I want to challenge you to take the road less traveled by continuing your education in a field that has true meaning and enjoyment for you. We have taught you all these years in the hopes that when you leave us, you will be inspired to continue learning your entire life. In today’s world of technology and progress, it will be those that continue to learn and keep pace with the world that will be successful.

To all the graduates of 2008, I would like to say thank you for your hard work to get to this point. As you stand here where the road diverges, I encourage you to take that road which leads you to a place of personal and spiritual enlightenment through life-long learning. It may not be the shortest road, but I assure you it will be the road that makes all the difference.