Michael Carley has some thoughts for students about to make the transition from one life to another.
It’s graduation time for both high schools and colleges, so it’s time for graduates to hear inspiring speeches. Typically, these speeches are made by college presidents, student leaders, or politicians. As I’m not likely to be any of these anytime soon, I’d like to use this space to provide whatever words of wisdom (or lack thereof) I may have to offer.
Graduates: I’d like to congratulate you on your accomplishment here today. While we’re doing so, we should thank all of those who contributed to your success. All of you worked hard to get here, but none of you made it on your own. So, if you haven’t already, take a moment to thank the family, friends, community members, faculty, staff, administration, employers and coworkers, babysitters, policy-makers, taxpayers and everyone else who had a part, large or small in your achievement.
As an educator, I hope we have done well by you.
I will say however, that if the only or primary thing you have learned from us consists of knowledge or skill in a particular subject matter, we have failed and failed miserably.
Subject knowledge is important, but knowledge is cheap. There are sources of it all around you, both useful and extraneous.
Rather than simple knowledge, it is better if we have helped you attain the ability to learn new things on your own. Just as importantly, I sincerely hope we have helped in your journey to learn the critical thinking skills so that you can sort through information as you receive it, distinguish between reputable and disreputable sources and make sound judgments between various arguments.
The world is changing around you. The demographic, technological, and cultural world into which you are emerging is dramatically different than what many of us entered a decade, two, three, or even four ago.
I hope that we have taught you to adapt, to pick up new skills as you go through life, to understand new technologies and new modes of thinking.
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Just as an example, according to at least one estimate, the jobs seventy percent of you will be doing twenty years from now do not even exist today.
I hope that we have taught you to adapt, to pick up new skills as you go through life, to understand new technologies and new modes of thinking.
So the question I have for you today is not whether you can factor a polynomial or diagram a sentence. I don’t care to know whether you remember the specific contributions of Emile Durkheim, John Locke, Charles Darwin, Toni Morrison, Sigmund Freud, or Madame Curie.
I won’t ask if you remember the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the difference between halogens and noble gases, or the fiscal impact of Keynesian economics.
All of these things are important; look them up. Hopefully, you know how by now.
Rather, I would ask whether you can think not just critically, but creatively.
If our generation and those previous have learned anything, it is that once you address one problem, another pops up, not unlike a life-based game of whack-a-mole. The future that you will face will be look and feel different, socially, culturally, politically, and environmentally. The world is unpredictable and will remain predictably so.
So you will face problems we thought we’d solved and some we never considered. To deal with them, you’ll need to surpass us, taking your minds and hearts in new directions.
So, I ask, can you think critically and creatively? Will you make a commitment here, now, and into the future to civically and ethically engage in your communities, considering new ideas with an open mind. Will you engage and communicate with the world full of cultures you don’t know, but will learn from?
And, when you find these solutions, as I’m sure you will, you will need to communicate them with one another and the world in new ways, new formats, and new technologies.
And you will find that the solutions you create leave behind a new set of quandaries, not greater than those of the past, but different and requiring new thinking still.
So, are you ready for this? Of course not; no one could be.
But if you are willing to embrace the challenge, to meet it with humility, empathy, and most of all, an open mind and a willingness to try, fail, and continue to learn, then the future of humanity is quite bright in your hands.
–Originally published in the Porterville Recorder, May 14, 2014.
—Photo Andrew Schwegler/Flickr
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