Valedictorian speech derides education system for creating slaves, suppressing creativity and robbing her generation of their potential to serve secretive governments and large corporate interests. Note the fidgeting by her principal/teacher behind her during the speech haha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3ts&feature=player_embedded
This should go viral. Its awesome. If you have teenager kids, brothers, sisters cousins etc. send this to them.
The transcript of this was posted a few weeks ago, so it is really good to actually see her giving the speech. Thanks Josh
It's rare to see one so young who has actually looked behind the Wizard's curtain, seen what's there, and then had the guts to announce it to the world. It gives me such hope to hear this. And I hope she never loses her vision and her courage; I have a feeling that she will keep them because she has the advantage of the powerful zeitgeist of this time, which feels unstoppable.
In sad contrast... Below is part of a thoughtful and incisive commencement speech by another young, intelligent woman, This young woman also had the advantage of the zeigeist of her time, but to be fair, it was appropriated and reformed by the establishment after the 60's, to suit its own ends. As much of an idealist and as courageous as she was at that time, she was also appropriated and reformed because, in subsequent years, she apparently lost her vision and attendant courgage somewhere in the halls of power.
"...But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves. To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action, and here again is where we ask ourselves, as we have asked our parents and our teachers, questions about integrity, trust, and respect. Those three words mean different things to all of us. Some of the things they can mean, for instance: Integrity, the courage to be whole, to try to mold an entire person in this particular context, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. If the only tool we have ultimately to use is our lives, so we use it in the way we can by choosing a way to live that will demonstrate the way we feel and the way we know. Integrity -- a man like Paul Santmire. Trust. This is one word that when I asked the class at our rehearsal what it was they wanted me to say for them, everyone came up to me and said "Talk about trust, talk about the lack of trust both for us and the way we feel about others. Talk about the trust bust." What can you say about it? What can you say about a feeling that permeates a generation and that perhaps is not even understood by those who are distrusted? All they can do is keep trying again and again and again. There's that wonderful line in East Coker by Eliot about there's only the trying, again and again and again; to win again what we've lost before.
"And then respect. There's that mutuality of respect between people where you don't see people as percentage points. Where you don't manipulate people. Where you're not interested in social engineering for people. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. And the word "consequences" of course catapults us into the future. One of the most tragic things that happened yesterday, a beautiful day, was that I was talking to woman who said that she wouldn't want to be me for anything in the world. She wouldn't want to live today and look ahead to what it is she sees because she's afraid. Fear is always with us but we just don't have time for it. Not now.
"There are two people that I would like to thank before concluding. That's Ellie Acheson, who is the spearhead for this, and also Nancy Scheibner who wrote this poem which is the last thing that I would like to read:
"'My entrance into the world of so-called "social problems"
Must be with quiet laughter, or not at all.
The hollow men of anger and bitterness
The bountiful ladies of righteous degradation
All must be left to a bygone age.
And the purpose of history is to provide a receptacle
For all those myths and oddments
Which oddly we have acquired
And from which we would become unburdened
To create a newer world
To transform the future into the present.
We have no need of false revolutions
In a world where categories tend to tyrannize our minds
And hang our wills up on narrow pegs.
It is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives.
And once those limits are understood
To understand that limitations no longer exist.
Earth could be fair. And you and I must be free
Not to save the world in a glorious crusade
Not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain
But to practice with all the skill of our being
The art of making possible.'"
-- From the commencement speech of Hillary Rodham, Wellesley College, May 31, 1969 http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html
Years ago I saw a video of this speech, but I can't find any links to it now.
I just new it was HRC... Didn't even read the whole thing, just went to the bottom to see if my hunch was correct....