Education's not finished, BC grads told
McCullough cites rich rewards of lifelong learning
In a heartfelt ode to the power and joys of education, acclaimed historian David McCullough exhorted Boston College graduates yesterday to "make the love of learning central to your life."
In his keynote address at the college's commencement on its Chestnut Hill campus, the award-winning historian extolled the "transforming miracle of education" and warned more than 3,300 graduates not to confuse plain facts with deeper truths.
"Information has value, sometimes great value," he said. "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 information were learning, McCullough jested, people could memorize the World Almanac and consider themselves educated.
"If you memorized the World Almanac, you wouldn't be educated, you'd be weird!" he exclaimed.
McCullough, whose critically acclaimed history "John Adams" was the basis for the HBO series on the nation's second president, received an honorary degree and said he was "profoundly honored by so high a tribute."
The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his best-selling historical volumes, McCullough has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Graduates' friends and family members by the thousands filled the stands of Alumni Stadium on a windy, brisk morning for the two-hour ceremony, the college's 132d commencement.
McCullough offered Adams and Charles Sumner, a Civil War-era US senator from Massachusetts, as shining examples of how education can change worldviews. Sumner became an antislavery leader after observing blacks studying side by side with whites in Paris.
"We are what we read, to a very considerable degree," the writer said.
With dismay, McCullough cited a survey finding that one-third of college-educated Americans had not read a single novel in the past year, and he called on graduates 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 also pleaded with graduates to rid the vernacular of a "verbal virus": the rampant use 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."
McCullough concluded by advising students to find work they believe in, walk with their heads up, travel, and always remember to tip the maid.
In welcoming remarks, the Rev. William P. Leahy, Boston College president, said he hoped graduates would remain curious and open to new ideas.
"If we are not people who wonder, if we never entertain what is new or different, we can easily become rigid and closed-minded, never leaving our familiar world with its neat categories," he said. "When that happens, the wounds of society and the suffering of others will seldom enter our consciousness, and we will feel little urgency to question existing structures and viewpoints." 