The Archives Team - Voices from the Past Series #1

We are the Indian Springs Archive Team. As we work on digitizing the past school documents to file in the digital archive, we are finding many inspiring, funny, and meaningful documents. We know it would be a loss if these documents rot away unnoticed in repositories. Therefore, we will select the excerpts from those documents and share them with the Springs Community in a series of articles called Voices from the Past. These articles will include students in the school magazines, the ponderings of school founders, and daily assorted public announcements. They represent the once and still vibrant campus culture and the root of the school. They are part of who we are. 

(Introduction written by William Kong)

The following is the graduation speech in 1967 given by headmaster Dr. Armstrong, the first headmaster of Indian Springs School. As we are approaching the graduation in May, this document provides a comparative view of how graduation was like in the past

So You Are Going To College

Upon occasions when walking over portions of the seven hundred acres on which Indian Springs School is located, I find myself on elevated positions that offer attractive views of wide expanses of landscape. The vantage point of an elevation loses details but yields perspective. Today, I would like to think with you about the business of going to college and to do so from the vantage point of several elevations.

I am usually accompanied on my walks about the campus by one or more companions. The interest they display in the chirping of a bird, the fragrance of a flower, the color of a leaf, the lightning-like movements of a fish, and in countless other sights and sounds, serves to remind me of what man is- a creature who wants to know, who has the capacity to find out, and who adds his own knowledge to the cumulative knowledge of the race.

You go to college primarily to strengthen a power of capacity that is uniquely human: the power of conscious choice and responsible behavior. The essence of the argument for liberty and democracy ultimately rests on the assumption that thought makes the dignity of man, and that the effort to think well is the basic morality. One crucial,and at times neg-lected aspect of thinking well, is social consciousness.You cannot find yourself, you can-not become aware of your own individuality save through the medium of social life. Social Life is more, however, than an external determining force; you are both shaped by and the shaper of the social life of which you are a part.Your effort to think well calls into play more than an empirical seeing by direct observation.Your awareness, your thought process, en-ables you to see or understand with your image-making spiritual and intellectual eye. It is the insight of your inner eye that makes you aware of the equilibrium of the whole, and upon occasions at least, that fills you with a sense of awe and wonder.

Do not live your college experience on a strictly bread-and-butter basis. Go to college to find joy in living instead of merely to graduate and then get a job. Do not permit the compulsion of events to destroy your capacity for intuition,inspiration and reverence. It is true that available knowledge describes you as no more than a dance of molecules, but intuition, faith, and humility tells you that there is "more than dimension in your life”. I am talking about the dimension in your life that is forever challenging you to see yourself both for what you are and for what you might become. I am talking about the dimension in your life that tells you that your purpose as a human being is: to face the eternal and not be afraid, to search without shame or cynicism for your own true identity and for communion with other human beings.

For reasons hidden from man, Moses was not permitted to enter the Promised Land. The Future must happily remain an uncharted adventure. Graduation from high school tempts you to think about matters of considerable significance.Your awareness of the nature of the human enterprise is sharpened. You see clearly that you are forever leaving something that is “no more”and moving toward something that is “not yet.” You grasp for the first time perhaps,that the past is present in you both as a curse and as a blessing.

Your journey through high school may be compared to the journey of a person traveling in a forest- a dark and impenetrable forest some of you will say. You gained some knowledge of the traii. You caught glimpses, upon occasions, of light overhead, glimpses that stirred your oceanic sense to an awareness of wide spaces ahead,of dreams not yet realized.

Now that you have reached one journey's end and are about to start a new one, there's a yearning to see more clearly where you have been, where you now are and, at a deeper level, why you are traveling at all. No person can tell another what to live by and for. It is true, nevertheless,that there is one goal that seems to encompass much of what the wisdom of the ages proclaims as worthy of pursuit. I refer to the goal of continuing growth. Age in all of its aspects is the cessation of growth. Stated differently, the rule of life is grow or die. Even the barnacle lost its head when it settled on a rock and started kicking food into its mouth with its feet. Organisms of all kinds retain their youth so long as they grow. This is a simple biological fact that applies to the human mind and spirit as well as to the human body.

No better than you, can your parents and teachers see through the storms which loom ahead. The Promised Land is as elusive for them as it was for Moses and as it is for you. To Live serenely and yet dynamically in the midst of explosive change, turmoil, strife and tragedy is a difficult art both for the young and the old.The rules are simple but can only be followed by the wise and the strong.What is required is that you determine what your values are and live by these,that you keep your face open to all men, that you fight for the life of your mind as you would for your body,and that you teach yourself to see that truth is beauty, love is harmony, and that evil comes from losing them. What is required is that you strive contin-uously to keep your senses open to beauty,your heart to hope,your mind to truth, and that you do your best to love life in all of its forms and the earth itself in humility, respect and wonder.

Your parents and teachers challenge you to turn every new experience in college into growth-grow with joy whenever possible but with pain when necessary. They challenge you to live your life in the depths rather than in the shallows, to lead a life that reflects ultimate rather than temporary concern. They challenge you to do this because it is only in the depths that human beings find the kind of hope that cannot be destroyed, and the truth upon which life and death are built. They challenge you to live in the depths because it is only in the depths that human beings find forgiveness for what has passed,and courage for what is to come.

 It is no burden to live your life in the depths. The burden of living comes from superficial or shallow living, examples of which include working for grades, focusing on having a good time, or going to college and working while in college primarily for vocational reasons. To live in the depths is to recognize that the going is the goal and that the going is invariably accompanied by both successes and failures. Nothing is more certain, as you go to college, that while in college you will know some joy and some sorrow, some triumphs and some defeats. What matters is the continuing development of your capacity to learn from experience. The story of the college "dropout" can usually be told in two sentences. The two sen-tences belong to Stanislaw J.Lec, a Polish writer,and are as follows: "It is easy to hang puppets. The strings are already there.”

 It is highly possible that the college you attend will be one in which you will frequently be stimulated or challenged, and perhaps to some degree coerced into smashing monuments. The youth of the world seem bent on the discovery and creation of a brave new world. I know that you do not want advice from those of us who belong to the older generation, but I can-not resist the temptation of saying to you: When smashing monuments, save the pedestals- they always come in handy.

As you depart Indian Springs our hope is that each of you will search continuously and imaginatively for your own Star of Destiny, which we think you can assume lies in the direction of ultimate worth and meaning.

May each of you, as you leave Indian Springs strive imaginatively and continuously to find your own star of destiny and follow it to ultimate meaning and ultimate worth.

Dr. Armstrong, 1968