HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES LAUDED FOR ACHIEVEMENT

Cape Girardeau Central High School turns out its senior class Friday night, the last of area schools to do so. These are joyous times for those who are completing high school degrees, a passage of sorts for these young people from secondary school to whatever comes next. We hesitate to offer in this space what is more often supplied by commencement speakers, but there are some thoughts worth sharing with the Class of 1993.

First, graduation from high school, while taken as a matter of course for some, is actually a considerable achievement. According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the "persistence of graduation" rate (the number of graduates divided by the number of freshmen four years earlier) was 73.2 percent in 1992. That number is down from 77.4 percent in 1985. Either way, graduates should view it like this: Three of every four students who are enrolled as high school freshmen won't don a cap and gown.

Second, some critics believe that education is failing today's young people, but that doesn't lessen the worth of the graduates' accomplishments. While this state and the nation have educational problems to work out, the majority of teachers these graduates learned from were knowledgeable, dedicated to their profession and perhaps even inspirational. And it stands as an object lesson graduates should recognize (now or eventually) that much of what they mastered in the classroom was in direct correlation to the effort they expended. Be assured this lesson will show itself again in life.

Third, the world these graduates witnessed in high school will not be the same one they know a decade or so from now. Probably no generation of students has had to face the technological and cultural changes this one will. Their parents' generation remembers when black-and-white televisions were common, while the graduates learned about computers in the classroom. Some who watch their sons or daughters graduate this spring will remember the last vestiges of segregated schools, while the teens now go out into a world that is increasingly multi-cultural. The key for the Class of 1993 is this: Embrace the changes rather than resisting them. Make them your opportunity rather than your burden.

Finally, graduates, count yourselves lucky. You collect your diplomas from a school in a stable and free nation. You haven't had to brave gunfire from civil war, you haven't known famine or starvation. You head off for more education or into the workplace with a reasonable confidence that talent and tenacity are liable to reap rewards. These are times, graduates, for great expectations, and your desire to succeed will go a long way toward determining if you do just that.