Greetings and salutations to you, the graduating fifth graders of Michianapolis Elementary School. Greetings and salutations to your parents, guardians, grandparents and especially all the grandparents here today raising grandchildren.
This is a big day and I am honored to share it with you. My name is Brett McNeil and I write essays for the local NPR station. Thank you. Please hold the applause.
To be honest, I was not the first choice to give this talk. But as many of you know, the school resource officer who was supposed to be up here is banned from the building after sexting with a teenager.
We’re not talking about that? I’m sorry.
As I was saying, this is a real privilege. So many happy faces. So much enthusiasm and promise. It’s terrific. Take all the photos!
The commencement speech has a long and long-winded history in our country but the basics are pretty simple. It’s a two-parter.
First is to share some wisdom from real-world and even hard-knock experience with humor and solemnity – making eye contact in the rear-view mirror, the front seat talking to those stuck in the back. Driving down the road to an old Faces song:
I wish that I knew what I know now / when I was younger
The second part of a speech like this is to commend you all for your efforts and encourage you to keep on keeping on. For fifth-graders, this means either continuing to apply yourselves at school or getting with the program next year. The go-getters among you will begin pulling away soon, the more disengaged among you headed in other directions.
This is why the adults in the room, sitting there on the bleachers and there in the teacher’s section, are always trying, in their way, to share with you what they know now.
They want you to find happiness and success in a land of significant misery, a culture of want and wanting, a society of haves and have-nots. Schooling, they understand, is at least some kind of leveler, some kind of ladder to somewhere. Unschooling, they also understand, is a greased pole to nowhere. I’m not sure what homeschooling is.
So in the words of the late, great Mr. T: “Don’t Be a Fool, Stay in School!”
I’m not big on slogans but that’s a good one.
School can be boring. You have to get up too early. The hallways smell. The food is bad. But the rooms are filled with teachers who want you to learn. That’s it. To expand your understanding and your capacity for future understanding. This is remarkable. All it costs is your time and effort.
Yes, there’s more to it for so many students. Difficult situations. Bad situations. What I want to say is that insofar as you are able, and someone in your life is willing to help, push. I work with grown men who cannot read and who likely never will. This is a profound horror.
You can blame them if you choose, and many do. You can blame the parents, the teachers, the teachers’ union, the system, the legislature, the courts, the prisons, and Betsy DeVos. What I want to share is that in the country where you live there is no giant inflatable mattress to catch you as you fall. There isn’t even a floor.
So we bug you to hit the books. We implore you to build your brains because we don’t know what else to say. Unless it is to say, We cannot protect you. We cannot protect ourselves.
Don’t worry. Everyone will still be receiving the Barnaby’s coupons.
A few final thoughts:
I hope each of you learns to love reading.
Try not to form bad habits. Some of you are already smartphone addicts. Stop there.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for American kids.
Fentanyl is now killing record numbers of 12-year-olds.
We want you to be happy children in spite of everything. And then we want you to grow up and solve our problems.
OK, one quick correction. Mrs. Karkovice informs me that Mr. T is not dead and is still living outside Chicago. I am happy to be wrong and regret the error.
That’s it.
Have a great summer, everybody!
Music: "Ooh La La" by Faces
