I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave....
For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it.And, the last paragraph...
I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!As someone who endured public school and also observed the development of academic assessment software, this speech gave me chills. Although her youthful exuberance paints this dismal and serious situation with vibrant colors, there is an eerie feeling of dread that her words do not fall on deaf ears, but those whose indoctrination efforts obviously require improvement.
American academia, the assembly of interconnected public institutions dedicated to the systematic removal of humanity and individuality from children in order to produce docile, obedient, subservient slaves for efficient labor in the future Corporate/Government Industrial Complex, seems to have failed here. With this particular student, years of influence, generations of indoctrinated teachers, and an arsenal of carefully crafted textbooks couldn't sufficiently do the job. The overwhelming facade of legitimacy in buildings, auditoriums, classrooms, desks, whiteboards, and computers was still not enough to break this one student of common sense. Somehow, the efforts of all the forces working together to advance the cohesive lie over the most impressionable years of childhood were exposed and smashed to pieces in one brutal speech.
What does this speech say to me? It is just a sad reminder that much of what the world calls "humanity" pursues death as a matter of course. In so doing, through ignorance or spite or carelessness, they groom the same pursuit deep into the psyche of the next generation. Academia is very effective at this, and is the hive of the wasp colony that eventually becomes our government bureaucracy. The old and wrong linger and die while a few bright sparks like Erica expose the embarrassing and obvious truth before being stifled, threatened, appeased, or somehow cornered into silence by one or more pincers of popular society. She has bitten off a large chunk, but did it at the right time, as there is still some refreshing and non-threatening naivete acting as her shield. More importantly, there is an empty but persistent vestige of general respect for the sanctity of young people's minds that will vanish a little bit with every astute valedictorian speech.
Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent. The plain truth isn't forgiven at all.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. -Friedrich Nietzsche
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