Anna Quindlen Commencement Speech
Kerby Reynolds
It is the time of year when influential people bestow their worldly wisdom to graduating classes across the country. On Sunday at Yale, Sen. Hillary Clinton told students, \"Pay attention to your hair, everyone else will.\" Then on Monday, at the same university, President Bush had encouragment for C-average students. But one of the graduation speeches that has caused the biggest sensation was never given. Two years ago, Villanova University asked author and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen to deliver the commencement address. She declined, she says, when a group of conservative students threatened to demonstrate against her well-known liberal views. \"I don't think you should have to walk through demonstrators to get to your college commencement.\"Spread by E-mail
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Most commencement speeches suggest you take up something or other: thechallenge of the future, a vision of the twenty-first century. Instead I'd likeyou to give up. Give up the backpack. Give up the nonsensical and punishingquest for perfection that dogs too many of us through too much of ourlives.
Evans, Robert C.. "What does Anna Quindlen mean by "give up the backpack" in her Mount Holyoke College Commencement Speech?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 18 Mar. 2012, -quindlens-commencement-speech-mount-holyoke-323739.
Very early in the speech, Quindlen uses the image of the backpack as hermetaphor for all the expectations that individuals put upon themselves or thatthey allow others to place on them. Referring to the effort of being perfect inthe clothes she wore, the way she acted, the type of student she was, shereflects,
The body of her presentation then becomes an exhortation to the graduates tofree themselves from the backpacks they are carrying as they graduate andventure out into the larger world. She wants them to find the strength withinthemselves to create personal standards for which to strive instead ofconforming to expectations set up by society. "You will have to bend all yourwill not to march to the music that all of those great "theys" out there pipeon their flutes."
As she concludes her speech, she reemphasizes her point with the quote youcite. She is encouraging the graduates to find values and ways of living thatallow them to become self-fulfilled individuals with worth because they areindependent and self-reliant, concluding, "Take it from someone who has leftthe backpack full of bricks far behind. Every day feels light as afeather."
Curtis-Stolper, Linda. "What does Anna Quindlen mean by "give up the backpack" in her Mount Holyoke College Commencement Speech?" edited by eNotes Editorial, 16 Mar. 2012, -quindlens-commencement-speech-mount-holyoke-323739.
At some point, every parent wishes their high school aged student would go to bed earlier as well as find time to pursue their own passions -- or maybe even choose to relax. This thought reemerged as I reread Anna Quindlen's commencement speech, A Short Guide to a Happy Life. The central message of this address, never actually stated, was: "Get a life."
As a history teacher at St. Andrew's Episcopal School and director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning, I want to be clear that I both give and support the idea of homework. But homework, whether good or bad, takes time and often cuts into each student's sleep, family dinner, or freedom to follow passions outside of school. For too many students, homework is too often about compliance and "not losing points" rather than about learning.
Most schools have a philosophy about homework that is challenged by each parent's experience doing homework "back in the day." Parents' common misconception is that the teachers and schools giving more homework are more challenging and therefore better teachers and schools. This is a false assumption. The amount of homework your son or daughter does each night should not be a source of pride for the quality of a school. In fact, I would suggest a different metric when evaluating your child's homework. Are you able to stay up with your son or daughter until he or she finishes those assignments? If the answer is no, then too much homework is being assigned, and you both need more of the sleep that, according to Daniel T. Willingham, is crucial to memory consolidation.
I have often joked with my students, while teaching the Progressive Movement and rise of unions between the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, that they should consider striking because of how schools violate child labor laws. If school is each student's "job," then students are working hours usually assigned to Washington, DC lawyers (combing the hours of the school day, school-sponsored activities, and homework). This would certainly be a risky strategy for changing how schools and teachers think about homework, but it certainly would gain attention. (If any of my students are reading this, don't try it!)
In the study "What Great Homework Looks Like" from the journal Think Differently and Deeply, which connects research in how the brain learns to the instructional practice of teachers, we see moderate advantages of no more than two hours of homework for high school students. For younger students, the correlation is even smaller. Homework does teach other important, non-cognitive skills such as time management, sustained attention, and rule following, but let us not mask that as learning the content and skills that most assignments are supposed to teach.
Homework can be a powerful learning tool -- if designed and assigned correctly. I say "learning," because good homework should be an independent moment for each student or groups of students through virtual collaboration. It should be challenging and engaging enough to allow for deliberate practice of essential content and skills, but not so hard that parents are asked to recall what they learned in high school. All that usually leads to is family stress.
But even when good homework is assigned, it is the student's approach that is critical. A scientific approach to tackling their homework can actually lead to deepened learning in less time. The biggest contributor to the length of a student's homework is task switching. Too often, students jump between their work on an assignment and the lure of social media. But I have found it hard to convince students of the cost associated with such task switching. Imagine a student writing an essay for AP English class or completing math proofs for their honors geometry class. In the middle of the work, their phone announces a new text message. This is a moment of truth for the student. Should they address that text before or after they finish their assignment?
When a student chooses to check their text, respond and then possibly take an extended dive into social media, they lose a percentage of the learning that has already happened. As a result, when they return to the AP essay or honors geometry proof, they need to retrace their learning in order to catch up to where they were. This jump, between homework and social media, is actually extending the time a student spends on an assignment. My colleagues and I coach our students to see social media as a reward for finishing an assignment. Delaying gratification is an important non-cognitive skill and one that research has shown enhances life outcomes (see the Stanford Marshmallow Test).
At my school, the goal is to reduce the barriers for each student to meet his or her peak potential without lowering the bar. Good, purposeful homework should be part of any student's learning journey. But it takes teachers to design better homework (which can include no homework at all on some nights), parents to not see hours of homework as a measure of school quality, and students to reflect on their current homework strategies while applying new, research-backed ones. Together, we can all get more sleep -- and that, research shows, is very good for all of our brains and for each student's learning.
Anna Quindlen needs no introduction, certainly none from me. However, for those readers whose attentions are confined to the sports pages, her op-ed column in the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She is the author of 12 books, one of which was made into a movie featuring Meryl Streep and Rene Zellweger. She currently writes a column in Newsweek.
I was given her book, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, by a friend of mine, a 60-year-old gentleman, who has survived cancer and (I think) works for the CIA as an undercover agent. I read it on a commuter flight from Washington to Charlotte.
I've been told that the book was originally written as a commencement speech. I recommend it to everyone. I don't particularly have any issues with Ms. Quindlen's message, but for some reason, I was moved to write a response - a reaction to her themes.
The words on the following pages entitled A Happy Guide to a Short Life were not intended to do anything other than to continue the spiritual and emotional debate in my mind around several concepts, including happiness, service, gratitude, and love.
The more I thought about my reaction to Ms. Quindlen's book, the more I started talking to my friends - Dan, Terry, Mom, Mike, Victor, Deb, Jasper, Bonnie, Miles, Ms. Rimmer, and a few others. From those loving conversations and communications, this little book was produced. Thanks to all who participated and cared.
Finally, and importantly, I used Ms. Quindlen's book as a paragraph-by-paragraph framework to draft the original text of this book. Then I salted in ideas and concepts to illuminate my points and poke fun. There is no attempt to disguise my source of motivation.
I'm not particularly qualified by profession or education to give advice and counsel. It's widely known in a small circle that I make a mean tomato sauce, and I know many inventive ways to hold a baby while nursing, although I haven't had the opportunity to use any of them in years. I have a good eye for a nice swatch and a surprising paint chip, and I have had a checkered but occasionally successful sideline in matchmaking.
But I've never earned a doctorate, or even a master's degree. I'm not an ethicist, or a philosopher, or an expert in any particular field. Each time I give a commencement speech I feel like a bit of a fraud. Yogi Berra's advice seems as good as any: When you come to a fork in the road, take it!
I can't talk about the economy, or the universe, or academe, as academicians like to call where they work when they're feeling kind of grand. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is really all I know.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote to Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator had decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office."
Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat."
Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
That's the only advice I can give. After all, when you look at the faces of a class of graduating seniors, you realize that each student has only one thing that no one else has. When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living.
But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.