2009 Citation of Merit Recipient
Thank you very much. I wish my Mom and Dad could be here. Dad was Class of 1933 and a proud graduate who made lifelong friends here.
I also wish that Dougie, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Cunningham, and Oscie could somehow be here; they might not believe it otherwise. Even if here were here, Mr. Cruikshank would not believe it.
I was a reluctant Taftie, and I freely admit that Taft did more for me in four years than I have done for Taft in the ensuing 50.
I want to share a couple of thoughts about Taft and education generally, based on phrases from our old Alma Mater.
“Kind firm molder”: In my case, overly kind, because I made enough missteps to warrant what we called ‘defenestration.’ I am grateful to Dougie, Joe Cunningham and others for giving me more chances than I deserved.
But it’s the word ‘molder’ that really matters. It’s not ‘kind firm teacher’ or ‘kind firm educator’ but—unabashedly—‘molder.’ Taft has always embraced that role, developing the whole child, and this weekend I have heard Willy MacMullen assure us that Taft will never abandon that responsibility and challenge. Mark Twain famously defined journalists as those who separate the wheat from the chaff—and then print the chaff. Taft teaches young people to separate the wheat from the chaff—and then to choose the wheat. That is to say, Taft embraces the teaching of values. May it always do so.
“Into the world with fearless step and free”: That is supposedly how we left Taft on graduation day and went on through our lives. I think this is only half right, at least for me. I don’t think I have ever felt ‘fearless,’ although, because of my Taft education, I have often been able to face down my fears and thus take risks. So for me the right expression would be ‘able to handle fear,’ but certainly not ‘fearless.’
The other adjective, ‘free,’ is a paradox. We were free to soar because Taft gave us roots. Taft, and our parents, grounded us in knowledge, faith and love, and those roots enabled us to soar, or to try to. And when we crash-landed, we were comforted.
However, I fear that many students today leave college with anchors, not roots. The anchor is, of course, the crushing debt that accompanies the college diploma, debt brought on by a national spasm of selfishness that traces back to the go-go ’80s and Ronald Reagan’s two terms as president. Some of you (and many of our parents) benefited from the GI Bill after World War II, when our country invested in higher education. Back then we recognized that, when any one of us is well educated, the entire society is lifted up. When one individual is equipped to make a living, participate in society, be a good parent, and so on, the fabric of American democracy is strengthened, and so society paid much of the bill. It was a social investment, and it paid off with the largest expansion of wealth in history and the creation of a strong American middle class.
(It wasn’t all rosy, of course. Most of higher education actually opposed the GI Bill, because it didn’t want millions of unwashed hard-scrabble veterans on their campuses. And America didn’t pass the GI Bill for purely selfless reasons. Fear was a factor too: we did not want millions of GIs out of work and on the streets.)
The social investment continued. In the much-maligned ‘Great Society’ of the mid-1960s, the federal Pell Grant program invested in higher education for the poor. In those days a Pell Grant was large enough to pay about 90 percent of the cost of tuition at a state college or university, and, as a consequence, the doors of higher education—and therefore into the middle class—were opened to millions of low income students.
But today a Pell Grant doesn’t cover even 50 percent of tuition, and, as many of us know first hand, colleges have jacked up their prices by increasing not only tuition but also all sorts of fees. And today the single best predictor of where a high school graduate goes to college is not her GPA or his SAT scores but family income.
Thanks to Taft, we left this school with ‘fearless step and free,’ (using my modified definition of ‘fearless’), and I believe today’s Taft graduates are equally blessed. But that is simply not true for millions who leave our public education system today. And that is not good.
“In these propitious days”: The complete thought from last verse of our old Alma Mater goes this way, “Into the world with fearless step and free we soon shall pass. In these propitious days the torch is lit.” This was, I know, the first time most of us had ever come across that word, ‘propitious,’ which, as I am sure you all know, means ‘favorable.’
Can these days, Spring 2009, be called propitious? We’re in a deepening worldwide recession, we’re fighting two wars, unemployment is approaching 10 percent banks, automakers and others are reeling, and climate change seems to be accelerating. Are these ‘propitious’ days?
I believe that they can be, partly because I am an optimist who prefers to see the glass as half full. We have a President who seems to be up to the challenges, a country that increasing believes that we can take control of our future, and—most of all—legions of young people who are eager to be part of something bigger than themselves. (This is not just ‘the Obama effect,’ although from where I stand—often in classrooms—the Obama effect is real.) For me, the most hopeful sign, and the reason that these may well turn out to be propitious days, is the spirit of those legions of youth, and how it’s being made manifest in their deeds.
Taft plays a role here, providing the garden in which this spirit—not to be served, but to serve—is nurtured daily and consistently. The challenge for the older generations is to provide opportunities and occasions for the younger generation to turn its energy and optimism into real work. I hope we are up to it.
As for me, I confessed at the outset that Taft did more for me in four years than I did for Taft in the ensuing 50. I promise to do more in the next 50 years.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this honor.
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