Commencement address to the 1988 graduating class of the Kansas State School for the Visually Handicapped

Today is the day you have often thought about and the day you will often remember in future years. Today at last you finish, and today at last you begin. The ceremony that honors your passage today is called Commencement to remind you that nothing ends unless something else begins. Your formal education may end today, but your serious education may be about to begin.

There are two ways to think about getting an education. The first way regards education as a kind of product, and getting educated is like the manufacture of an automobile. Automobiles are made in factories on assembly lines, where they are put together, painted, polished, and tested to see if they come up to specifications. Only finished products are delivered to the world, and their future performance depends on their design and their construction, as well as how they are driven and maintained.

Perhaps your education has been like that. You are now completely put together, your bodies are painted and polished, your windshields sparkle, and your whitewalls are brilliant. You certainly have been tested enough, and you have met all specifications for your particular model. You are perfect now, at your peak and ready for the road. Of course, you can come back if you have trouble, but you should be good for five years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first.

There is another way to think about getting an education. It might be called the process view of education. According to this view, if you forget every fact you learned in school, you would still be well prepared for your futures. The process view says your education cannot be measured by how many facts have been drummed into you or how many you can produce intact on demand. Instead, your education is measured in your habits of mind, in your style and method of solving problems, in your resourcefulness as a person, and in your relationship with yourself and with others. It does not matter how many words are in your vocabulary: It is more important for you to know how to use a dictionary.

As far as the factual content of your education is concerned, there is both good news and bad news to report. The good news is that about fifty percent of what you have learned in school is correct. The bad news is that nobody knows which fifty percent is correct and which is not.

There is no need to despair; you may not have been cheated. You have the tools of thought to help you out of this predicament. You have the habits of mind and the resources that you need. You can and you must evaluate what you know to consider if it is really so, or if it needs revision. If you have learned how to learn and how to revise your knowledge separating the sound from the silly, you have been well educated.

There is an important lesson to be learned from your class motto, First, keep peace within yourself, then you can bring peace to others. One meaning of keeping the peace is especially relevant to our lives today. Peace is kept by preventing or resolving conflicts which threaten to disturb the peace. Your inner peace and mine can be kept only if we can understand what it means to be blind in a world where most people are not. We need to understand and believe that it is respectable to be blind. We need to recognize that being blind is not the disaster it is commonly regarded. We need to believe and act as though being blind is neither more nor less important than being bald, or short, or black, or from Missouri. We need to know about and practice those alternative techniques that make it possible for the average blind person to compete on terms of equality with the average sighted person, performing the average job successfully and with pride. We need to be skeptical of what we are told about ourselves, being ready always to accept the sound and to reject the silly.

There is a paradox which you must eventually confront. The paradox is that our society is extraordinarily generous and positively oriented toward helping the blind, and yet damaging discrimination and erroneous conceptions of blindness are also plentiful and must be eradicated. You will be offered the easy path again and again, until you are in danger of preferring that path. You will be advised toward or away from some course of action because it is safer, until you will be in danger of believing that it is unsafe to be blind. Most such advice will be positively motivated in some sense but will be harmful because of the assumption it makes that to be blind is to be helpless, to be vulnerable, to be inferior. You will be asked to accept those assumptions about yourself as you accept the easy path and the safer road. Do not buy it. It is not a bargain. The cost is much too high. You will need to be on the watch for those whose living depends on helping you. You may need their help, and it is important to use it wisely and well. But never pay the price of your inner peace to obtain it. Remain true to your own dreams and goals. Take comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone, that others have been there already, and that what you want is not out of the question. Never listen to talk about feasible or realistic alternatives if it means giving up your heart's desire for the safe or easy way. Remember that the more you are made out to be in need of expert care and assistance, the more credit and honor goes to the professional helper. You are already the expert you need to be on matters of what it means to be blind.

You can keep the peace within yourself by exercising the resources you have acquired here these past few years. You are surely not a finished product, but you have the habits of mind, the tools of thought, and the alternative techniques you need to make it. It is time for you to commence, to begin the tasks ahead of you, and to join us as we change what it means to be blind. We are proud of you today; and if our future depends on you, it is in pretty good hands.

Charles E. Hallenbeck, Ph.D.
May, 1988
Kansas City, Kansas