The President gave the commencement address on Sunday at the historically black Hampton University. His talk was all about responsbility and freedom.
President Obama spoke of the responsibilities of parents and of Americans at large to see to it that our children get the education they need to be competative in a world where a high school education is simply no longer enough. He didn’t stop the buck with parents, however, he also pointed out that the 1,100 graduates that sat behind him now had a responsibilty to be role models and mentors to their communities. To put their educations to good use as they go out into one of the harshest job climates since the Great Depression.
Obama reassured graduates that their education would ultimately be the thing that saw them through the uncertainties of their economic times. He recalled that Hampton was built in 1861 as a school for escaped slaves who sought asylum after fleeing nearby plantation in the Confederate South. He pointed out that the founders fo the school had seen education for what it was, a source of freedom.
As he put it, “They recognized, as Frederick Douglass once put it, that ‘education means emancipation.’ They recognized that education is how America and its people might fulfill our promise.”
That still holds true today for students facing a different set of challenges. The President declared that it was both his desire, and his obligation along with all Americans, to see to it that all of our children get the kind of education they need to fulfill their promise, just like the graduates at Hampton this year.
“All of us have a responsibility, as Americans, to change this, to offer every single child in this country an education that will make them competitive in our knowledge economy. That is our obligation as a nation.”
