I went to my son’s high school graduation ceremony last week and was bored by bad speeches. I wonder why can’t they at least say something more useful than those shallow motivational speak for these 17 year olds. Graduation often brings mixed feelings. Some move on to universities and some will enter into the workplace. They can use a few words of wisdom. More than half of these kids will earn themselves a Bachelor degree in four years, what’s next?
Not sure you know, the origin of the terms "bachelor," "master," and "doctor" were first introduced at the University of Paris, the "mother" of English, American and European universities. By the thirteenth century, these terms were commonly use throughout the world. The term "bachelor" derived from the Latin for "cowherder" (surviving with its original denotation in the Spanish word "vaquero") and denoted an “unschooled individual” who had no specific occupation and few prospects for gainful employment. You’re not supposed to be prepared for the workplace by attending university. We forgot what universities were for.
A bachelor would be allowed to begin his studies in philosophy and upon completion to receive a degree of Master of Arts and a teaching license or "licentiate." The term "doctor" meant "teacher." Initially, it was an honorary title which medieval faculties used to designate distinguished colleagues.
Other than an honorary designation, the term "doctor" was first used by the University of Paris to designate masters who had completed a prescribed course of study in theology (then called the "Queen of the Sciences", I like this better) and who had proven their intellectual and teaching skills by publicly defending a thesis before the theology faculty. Except in England, where the doctorate retained its honorary character until the nineteenth century.
What’s a good speech? Here’s one. The late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, delivered the following June 1978 on the occasion of Class Day Afternoon Exercises at Harvard University. (Transcription by Michael E. Eidenmuller from AmercicamRhetoric.com) Here’s s small excerpt. There's never a better time to reread this and rethink our paths:
But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that the vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems, which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented (by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life.
Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which develops out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different and which about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity. Neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable. If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world's rifts, I would have concentrated on the East's calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West, in our days, such as I see them.
A Decline In Courage
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tonguetied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
