Keep On Learning!*

*& while you're at it use proper English.

On Monday 19 May 2008 David McCullough, author of the classics John Adams & 1776, gave the commencement address at Boston College. Not surprizingly, he had a lot of good things to say about continuing to learn throughout their lifetimes. He called on them to: "make the love of learning central to your life." & he held up 2nd President John Adams as a shining example of this.

He also warned the graduates that knowledge & wisdom are not the same thing. "Information has value, sometimes great value. But information, let us be clear, isn't learning. Information isn't poetry, or art, or Gershwin or the Shaw Memorial. Or faith. It isn't wisdom. Facts alone are never enough. . . . One can have all the facts and miss the truth."

"If you memorized the World Almanac, you wouldn't be educated, you'd be weird!"

He urged the students to "read, read, read!" "Read the classics of American literature that you've never opened. Read your country's history. . . . Read about the great turning points in the history of science and medicine and ideas."

He went on to criticize the poor language skills used by most people these days. He asked the grads to clean up the vernacular, removing "verbal virus". He defined it as the overuse of "like," "you know," "awesome," and "actually." "Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country, actually.'"

He ended by urging the grads to find something they believe in doing, travel & esp to always tip the maid.

He was honored by Boston College with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

Source: Education's not finished, BC grads told