Superintendent’s Andover High School Graduation Speech 2017
To the Class of 2017, congratulations. Most of you began your journey of formal
education thirteen years ago. The road has been filled with special moments and
tonight is its culmination. The faculty and administration are proud of each of you.
We hope you will return in the coming years to share your accomplishments and
challenges and to inspire the students who seek to follow in your footsteps.
To the parents, relatives and friends of this graduating class, thank you for your help
and partnership along the way. You have been a strong support for both the
students in this class and for the faculty and administration. Education is not
isolated to the school staff, the school building or the school day. Only when there is
continuity and consistency among the school, the home, and the community can we
achieve true educational success. We have been strengthened by your support of
our work and hope that you will continue to help us make the Andover Public
Schools the best we can be. You have every right to be proud of your graduating
student and we hope you relish this moment.
I would like to offer some parting words to the Class of 2017. You are a class whose
achievements in the classroom, in the arts and on the playing field have been
exceptional. Most of you intend to further your education. My hunch is that, given all
you have achieved so far, you will become the leaders of the future, the decision
makers and policy makers who set the direction for this community, state, and
nation. We hope that the education you have received will enable you to take on
those leadership roles with compassion, thoughtfulness, and integrity.
You are also exceptional in another area. You are one of the most diverse classes of
students ever to graduate from Andover High School. Students in this class were
born in such diverse places as Athens, Greece; Bogota, Columbia; Beijing, China;
Bombay, India; Seoul, South Korea; Jerusalem, Israel; Guadalajara, Mexico;
Petrograd, Russia; Kisumu, Kenya; and Tehran, Iran, as well as a number of cities
across the United States. You have come to appreciate each other personally and to
recognize the richness that this diversity offers us in learning about and
understanding different perspectives, cultures, and religions. Because of your
experience in Andover, you accept diversity as a normal and positive fact of life. You
realize that the culture of our high school and the culture of our nation are enriched,
not diminished, by our diversity. You have created the kind of inclusive community
at Andover High School that respects and honors difference and that stands up to
racism, prejudice and discrimination.
However, as leaders of tomorrow, you are entering a nation and a world that are
deeply divided, with serious political and social divisions. Whether the debate is
about immigration, global warming, international relations, terrorism, health care,
taxes, energy sources, or job creation, there are strong divisions among people.
Often there seems to be no middle ground, no way to bridge the divisions. Even
fundamental democratic processes and institutions, from the free press to the
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judicial system, are being questioned. As graduates, you are entering a divided and
contentious environment that tends to be filled more with simplistic slogans and
rhetoric than with useful information on which to base sound judgments. For that
reason I would like to leave with you with some thoughts about tolerance and the
search for truth that I hope echo what we have attempted to teach throughout your
school experience.
Education is about the search for knowledge, but it is also about the search for truth.
Whether in science or in politics or in art, the further you proceed in education, the
more you participate in a dialogue about what is the best representation of truth
about our world. The further you progress, the more complicated it becomes. The
more we advance, the more we know; yet the more we advance, the more we know
what we don’t know. The more we learn, the more we realize that all knowledge is
limited, that all knowledge must be viewed with a degree of uncertainty.
Jacob Bronowski, one of the great scientists and philosophers of the 20th century,
described science as ever lurching “after exactitude, and every time it appears
within our grasp it takes another step away toward infinity.” In essence, the more
closely you examine something, the more you learn about it but also the more
questions that emerge. According to Bronowski's "principle of tolerance," we must
never believe we have the absolute truth, we must never accept a conclusion
without knowing the limits and exceptions to that conclusion, and we must always
tolerate some level of ambiguity.
As in science, in politics and in personal relationships the principle of tolerance tells
us to question our own thinking, to ask whether there is data that counters our
beliefs, to imagine that for all we know, we may be wrong. We must still act on our
beliefs, but recognize that we may need to change and be changed by what we learn
from our actions and from others.
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President John F. Kennedy gave a commencement address at Yale University in
1962. He said, “For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate,
contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a
prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the
discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere—in government as in
business, in politics as in economics, in foreign affairs as in domestic affairs.”
Today, we are again faced with mythology, particularly in our political world, that
would rather give simple answers than complex truths, that would rather pretend to
know the answer than frame the important questions. This is an important time in
history. Class of 2017, you are emerging as citizens in an era that sorely needs
critical thinkers who won’t accept simple answers to complex problems and who
are committed to creating a better world.
Jacob Bronowski closes his book on the evolution of science by saying very simply,
“We must touch people.” In other words, we must realize our human fallibility and
our personal fallibility and apply that principle of tolerance to our daily lives.
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It is for this reason that the Andover Public Schools spends so much energy
balancing a strong academic program by applying the knowledge students gain to
acts of service to others and our community. For it is in the act of service that we
see the world from another perspective, see its complexity, see our fallibility, and
develop tolerance for others. And it is the richness of the diversity you have already
experienced in your relationships with your fellow students that teaches us that our
diversity is a gift not a hindrance; that differing perspectives enable us to expand
our horizons and our understanding; that compassion, thoughtfulness and openness
serve us well in finding common ground and common direction.
I hope as you go forward you will remember the critical thinking skills we taught
you and the sense of empathy and ethics that have been so much a part of your
experience in high school. But most important, don’t accept myths as truth. View
with skepticism those who offer simple answers rather than explain the complexity
of the issues we face. Do not underestimate the power of open-mindedness and
tolerance to help us shape a better world.
You are a class of many talents. You have made great contributions to Andover High
School. You have all it takes to be successful and make a positive difference in this
world. I am confident that you will accomplish much in the years ahead and will
continue to make us proud that you were once part of the Andover High School
community. Again, congratulations, and all of us at Andover wish you the very best
in your future endeavors.
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