To a Generation Leaving School – Sunday, June 04, 1944
We have come again to that time in a school year when we grade and accredit, promote and graduate, and otherwise appraise the academic accomplishments of our youth, After vacations are over, some will return to continue their studies; some will go to higher institutions of learning—but many are now forever leaving the schoolroom, leaving teachers, campus, and cherished associates. And despite all displays of exuberance and all expressions of relief, it is a sober time for youth.
This year, young people, variously equipped for life, are leaving their time of preparation earlier than usual to go out into a world that expects performance; that expects them to assume their share of its responsibilities and troubles; expects them to contribute to the needs of the day and to the preservation of their heritage. And many who would have followed other pursuits now find themselves engaged in war, with no opportunity to make plans for the immediate future. This makes it more important than ever before that they take with them a reliable sense of values, that they sift—the facts from the fallacies, the truths from the theories, the essentials from the non-essentials. And as a safeguard to any generation leaving school to face the realities of life, we must, in fairness, be reminded that some things we have learned with great effort will soon be forgotten; that some of this year’s textbooks may next year become obsolete; that some of the memorized data we have tucked away in our mental recesses may prove to be excess baggage; that many theories will change; that new truths will yet be discovered.
But if we have learned how to think; if we have learned to keep our minds open for all that the future may reveal; if we have learned to value qualities of high character above mere intellectual sharpness; if we have learned to avoid intolerant dogmatism, academic and otherwise; and have learned to guard against assuming that our education is complete, we shall be better prepared to meet the shocks of life, the inevitable changes, and the many adjustments that are sure to come. And so, as school doors are left behind, as students are turned out with academic finish and flourish, we give reminder to ourselves and to generations of students yet to come, always to keep an open mind for truth; never smugly to close the books and say, “That s that !” More tragic than he who thinks “there are no more worlds to conquer” is he who thinks he has finished his education—he who supposes that there are no more truths to be revealed.
Heard over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 4, 1944. Copyright – 1944.
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June 04, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,772