Editorial "The Class of 2007" (Printed June 8, 2007)
Posted by Sentry Editor at 6/14/2007 9:58 AM 
Categories: Happenings, Opinion, Ward Peck, So Po Schools, Cape schools
Categories: Happenings, Opinion, Ward Peck, So Po Schools, Cape schools
Congratulations to the South Portland and Cape
Elizabeth high school class of 2007. Graduation for both schools will
take place on Sunday. Weather permitting, the ceremony for South
Portland’s graduating seniors will begin at 4 p.m. and take place at
the football field behind the high school. The Cape Elizabeth Class of
2007 will hold their ceremony at Fort William’s Park at 2 p.m.
Somehow, both invitations to speak at the ceremonies we expected to receive have apparently been lost, so we will save the full speech for next year. Too bad, It was a peach.
But we will touch on the essential theme, which we believe to be timeless.
Get out.
Go.
Move out of your house; flee your town; vacate the state; relocate out of the region; get a passport and leave the country.
We don’t mean forever, just long enough to get a different perspective. For some of you that plan is well in the works as you prepare for the next four years (or more) at an out-of-state college. For the rest of you, trust me, you won’t regret it. If your plans for the next four years involve a school within four hours of your house, spend the summer someplace else.
“But I’ve got to work,” you say.
“Then work,” we say. There are jobs just about everywhere and in a lot of those places quite a few jobs pay better than here.
And if you are graduating and don’t have any plans to take another class ever again, our advice is especially directed at you. You can show your pride in Maine by not adding to the already high proportion of under-skilled, under-educated citizens in our workforce. Hopefully, by the time you return you will understand that going to class isn’t the worst thing in the world and the opportunities to correct this misguidance will have increased.
But if you do take our advice, stick around until Tuesday when you can vote on the state bond referendum, which will ensure their are jobs for the skilled and unskilled alike and expand those opportunities for more Mainers to get the college education that is so essential today.
–Ward Peck
Somehow, both invitations to speak at the ceremonies we expected to receive have apparently been lost, so we will save the full speech for next year. Too bad, It was a peach.
But we will touch on the essential theme, which we believe to be timeless.
Get out.
Go.
Move out of your house; flee your town; vacate the state; relocate out of the region; get a passport and leave the country.
We don’t mean forever, just long enough to get a different perspective. For some of you that plan is well in the works as you prepare for the next four years (or more) at an out-of-state college. For the rest of you, trust me, you won’t regret it. If your plans for the next four years involve a school within four hours of your house, spend the summer someplace else.
“But I’ve got to work,” you say.
“Then work,” we say. There are jobs just about everywhere and in a lot of those places quite a few jobs pay better than here.
And if you are graduating and don’t have any plans to take another class ever again, our advice is especially directed at you. You can show your pride in Maine by not adding to the already high proportion of under-skilled, under-educated citizens in our workforce. Hopefully, by the time you return you will understand that going to class isn’t the worst thing in the world and the opportunities to correct this misguidance will have increased.
But if you do take our advice, stick around until Tuesday when you can vote on the state bond referendum, which will ensure their are jobs for the skilled and unskilled alike and expand those opportunities for more Mainers to get the college education that is so essential today.
–Ward Peck
Comments