Salutatorian Address
We have congregated today to celebrate not only each other and our achievements, but more to the point, those of the school and its profound pedagogical capabilities. As graduates, we are on a precipice; the horizon between childhood and adulthood draws nearer. As daunting as that prospect might appear, we can rest secure in the knowledge that any anxieties we may harbor are baseless. After all, we would not be standing here were the adults in our lives less certain of our ability to function independently and more or less competently. We have, most emphatically, been prepared, and it is the numerous ways in which this school and its faculty have prepared us that I wish to discuss. While it would be impossible to predict every student’s individual life and career choices, a Ridgeview education has done something better: it has given us the adaptability requisite to any situation.
The foundation of the adaptability with which we have been gifted is careful analysis. We have had the benefit of a liberal and classical education, one which, most importantly, includes the Trivium. The Trivium, or sequence of study from Grammar (which is how thoughts are expressed), to Logic (which is how those thoughts build upon each other), to Rhetoric, in which we were taught how to evaluate the quality of a given argument. Throughout, we learned how to construct and refine arguments, how to be persuasive, and how to identify flaws in the attempts of others to persuade us. It has given us an unbiased method by which to consider multiple, often conflicting, perspectives before coming to our own, informed, opinions. Moreover, it has taught us the discipline of open-mindedness; although confident in our own well-founded viewpoints, we do not find the presentation of new information to be threatening. We welcome a challenge either as deeper knowledge to be gained, or a whetstone against which our own insights can be honed. Sophistry is rendered impotent; while it can often disguise the relative weakness of an argument, that approach largely fails when the substance of an argument is inspected from a logical standpoint. This extended to our own compositions, where we swiftly learned that while both reason and emotion had a place in good arguments, they were not by any measure mutually interchangeable. Sophistry, meanwhile, was for those too lazy to go to the effort of making an actually tenable argument.
A perusal of the different subjects made available to students reveals another fundamental gift of a Ridgeview education: it has sought to inculcate within us a familiarity with diverse and complex bodies of knowledge. Before we may choose any of our own classes, students must study language, art and music, each higher than the next in humanity’s expression of beauty and the profound. Our later classes on government, history, and science ensure that we are both well-informed as to the origins, values, and functions of the society in which we live, its capabilities and achievements, and the aspects in which there is still more that we must achieve. If nothing else, this education enables us to converse on a wide array of topics with a more than passing familiarity. The real significance of such comprehensive education is, to my mind at least, that it presents us with a baseline understanding of the complete spectrum of human capabilities, whether for good or for ill. That humanity has achieved great things is both the call to action, and the warning; held to standards as high as we are, it is entirely possible that one of us here now, or another who stands here in the future may achieve something greater. It is our responsibility to ensure that ‘greater’ also means ‘better,’ that what we leave behind is something fundamentally good. Regardless of the path we choose to pursue, however we strive for the good, and whatever our different trajectories through life may be, we have been prepared for the journey.
Not all that is of value can be learned in a formal classroom setting, and some things must indeed be experienced personally to be internalized. Ridgeview has long recognized this, and has accordingly offered and encouraged us to participate in excursions and camping trips throughout the school year and during the summer. There we are brought before natural wonders that have no relation to civilization or its trappings. There we engage in a different, but equally important kind of learning, towards which we push our bodies with the same rigor that our minds are regularly subjected to. It is a deeply cathartic experience, one which at once relaxes and focuses our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.
Today, and for all days to come, we owe an inestimable debt of gratitude to Ridgeview, and to the faculty who are its bones and sinews, for it is they who have had the monumental task of pulling and pushing us into the young men and women we have become. But let it not be said that such a task is thankless: I want to express gratitude to our teachers on behalf of myself and my fellow students (if it would not be presumptuous) for the monumental gift of their wisdom and example. You have imparted to us the ability to think and write well, introduced us to the best of humanity and cautioned us against the worst, and taken us into the forests and mountains to show us the beauty of untamed nature. You have required of us -- and would accept -- nothing less than our best. You, and this school, have painstakingly drawn out and shown us our best selves, our greatest potential, and I only hope that we I hope that we will prove worthy of the great privilege and responsibility which that entails.
Anna-Sofia Hobaugh
