Graduation speech rant [View all]

[Jilly_in_VA]

Friday I attended the last high school graduation I'm likely to go to, that of my youngest grandson (I have one more granddaughter, but she's just a rising third-grader and I'm almost 83). It was nice and relatively short, except for one thing which kind of annoyed me. The first student speaker (I assume valedictorian, although they did not so designate him) was the son of someone my daughter had gone to preschool with. The dad is now pastor of a rather large non-denominational church. Well, this kid got up and basically preached a 5-minute sermon! His speech was laced with Bible quotes, mostly New Testament although he did throw in one from Jeremiah, from one end to another! Now this may be okay for a private (read: Christian) school graduation, but I really question its appropriateness for public school. Bearing in mind, of course, that this is ruby-red east Tennessee where some may have thought this was okay, still, I have questions and comments.

When I was in high school, the speakers had to submit the text of their speech to the administration the week before graduation. After I graduated, which was 1961, things got really tense, and during the protest days of the Vietnam War, at least one kid deviated from his submitted speech and they turned off his mic. I'm wondering if this is still the case, and how this speech got by if it is, because none of the other speakers, including the school board chairman, the superintendent of schools, the principal, the senior class president, or the other student speaker, so much as mentioned God, let alone the New Testament evangelical version! So how is this okay? Had I been a Buddhist or Jewish or Muslim student, I'd have been more than a little offended. After it was all over, my daughter, who went to Catholic high school, said, "Good grief! We didn't even have that at my graduation! Catholics don't proselytize like that!" I was generally appalled, wondering how it had gotten by, but all I said was, "I guess it's obvious who his dad is." And then I wondered exactly who wrote the speech....