Who are you?

Last week I was privileged to be guest speaker at West Monroe High School's National Honor Society induction ceremony. Here's what I said.
 

Picture this. A young woman gets off a train in a small village along the northwestern coast of Spain.  She adjusts the weight of her over-sized backpack and looks around.

Nearby, several young people are conversing in the rapid-fire, rat-a-tat of native Spanish speakers.

“Donde está la pension (Where is the hostel)?” The woman with the backpack has addressed her question to the young Spaniards.

“Allá (over there),” they answer, gesturing toward main street.

But the backpacker has given herself away. Her Spanish is heavily accented with U.S. American English. And the young Spaniards gather around.

Where in the United States are you from? they ask. How did you get here? Why did you come here? What’s it like where you are from? Does everyone in the United States go to college? Does everyone really own a car? Do you have your own television set at home? And on and on.

In that moment, I realized something very important, something so important that it changed my understanding of who I was in the world, and therefore changed my life. Remembering it, and telling you the story this evening, still has power to move me.

Because what I learned about myself at that moment was that, in comparison to the young Spaniards with whom I was carrying on this conversation in my rather inadequate Spanish… what I understood was that in comparison to them, I was incredibly wealthy and privileged.

Now, in fact, what they could not possibly know is that I had taken out a student loan in order to participate in a study abroad program. I had very little cash in my pocket. And after settling my things in a room in the pensión, I would go to the local market and buy a hunk of bread, a piece of cheese, and a couple of pieces of fruit, and that would be my food ration for the entire day.

Nevertheless, they were right. In comparison to them, I was wealthy and privileged… just because I had managed to do a thing they would never in a million years do, namely…. cross an ocean to spend a summer traveling and learning in a strange land. Such an experience was beyond the realm of the possible for them.

We are all here this evening to celebrate the accomplishments of and induct a hundred young people into a National Honor Society chapter that already has a hundred members. Congratulations!

Each of you who has achieved this honor and all of your friends, parents and grandparents are rightfully proud of this achievement. Again, congratulations!

But my job is bigger than to congratulate you! Laurels are no good if all we do is rest on them. My job is to challenge you. It is to call you and push you and prod you toward the next big thing. My job is to ask questions that will shake you awake, just like the questions of the young Spaniards in my story shook me awake so many years ago.

Who are you in this world? Not in the eyes of mom, dad and grandparents, but… Who are you in the eyes of a world in which only a very small fraction of kids even get to go to high school? And in which an even smaller fraction finish high school? And the percentages continue to decline of those who get to attend college, and the lowest of all, those who complete college!

Here’s a few numbers for comparison:

According to United Nations data, in 2005, less than 25% of girls in Afghanistan and just over 50% of Afghan boys complete primary school. Yes, primary school.

In the African country of Niger in 2011, just 10% of high school-age kids is actually in school. In 25 countries worldwide, less than half of high school-age kids are actually in school.

How about college? Almost 75% of college-age youth worldwide are not in college. That’s as of 2011 according to data collected by The World Bank.

So…. who are you in the eyes of the world? Well, one answer is, you’re a member of a privileged minority that has access to education, indeed, to education that has been largely paid for by tax dollars up to this point.

And when it comes to college, because you are the smart ones, many of you will qualify for TOPS—Louisiana’s excellent and generous college scholarship program.

The more challenging question is, What are you doing with the educational privilege you enjoy? How are you going to use your privilege as an educated person to give back to your community? How are you as an educated person going to seek justice and peace in the world? How will you promote the common good at every level of society?

I’m not just asking how you’re going to pay the bills and accumulate personal wealth, although I hope you are successful at that too! I’m asking, What are you going to do to leave the world a better place than you found it? Because that is the responsibility of each and every one of us who enjoys the privilege of access to education.

Recently I was searching for something online, and I stumbled across a music video produced by an organization called “Playing for Change.” It begins with a street musician in Los Angeles singing and playing the song, “Stand by Me.” Then it shows the Playing for Change team going around the world collecting performances of the same song from Africa, the Netherlands, Russia, South America, Italy—and more. And all of those performances are merged into a wonderful montage of voices from around the world singing one song.

The electronic merging of those voices from around the world stands for the mission of the young men and women who formed and founded Playing for Change. They intend to change the world through music and their skills as communicators and the wonders of digital media.

I think they’re making progress.  You can check them out online at playingforchange.com.

But what about you? How are you going to change the world? How will you take your candle and go light the world?