The world the class of 2017 from CVR and Arthur Pigeon High School are graduating into is significantly different from the one the class of 1947 emerged into after leaving Huntingdon Academy 70 years ago.
After all, the period following the Second World War was booming, and while laced with extreme sadness and a sense of mourning, it was a time of great optimism, innovation and social change. At least this is what those of us who did not live through this time are taught.
With all of the major news stories circulating in the weeks before this years’ scholars received their hard earned diplomas, a sense of optimism may be a bit harder to muster. The daily news cycle recently has included terrorist attacks in The United Kingdom and across Europe, horrific bombings and war in the Middle East, famines in African countries, the threat of closed borders, division and increased protectionism across the border, worsening environmental predictions and truly terrifying infernos that claimed the lives of so many in London and in Portugal.
But, through all of these tragedies, there are three lines of response that always emerge, and I suspect this would also have been the same in 1947: the importance of keeping an open mind and resisting the temptation to close yourself off to others and to the world; of seeking out kindness, of always looking for the helpers when you need one and in becoming one yourself, and finally, finding the courage you need at any moment to keep going. Every day we watch heroes emerge out of the hardest days of their lives. The real world is not an easy one, but I have every confidence that today’s graduates are more connected to those around them and to those across oceans and borders, and that they have a much better understanding already of their potential to make the world a better place.
Congratulations to the class of 2017 – I have no doubt all of you will go on to do great things.
