Hall of Fame Speech

I was inducted into my high school Hall of Fame today! It was a lovely ceremony, with three other inductees from other graduating classes. The bond we shared was public service and giving back to the community. I feel so honored and honestly blown away by the thoughtful ceremony and the achievements of the others there. By the way, my high school is named after former U.S. Senator Brien McMahon, and so we were the McMahon Senators! You can imagine how interesting that was for me… Here is the speech I gave today, drawing from certain life lessons of two of my favorite teachers: “Get out of your culture,” Charlie Wiggins used to shout at us in twelfth grade Anthropology class. He meant that we were guilty of seeing different people through the lens of Americans. We were being “ethnocentric.” Unconsciously judging the world by our experience, our rules and mores, our privilege. Mr. Wiggins was thought of as kind of a hippie, a free spirit, and — even though I did not know the word in those days — a progressive. I’d never heard of ethnocentricity. Oh, I knew other societies were different — like the French spoke French (and acted it!) Indians thought cows were sacred, the Puritans had avoided any sort of color or joy in life. But in my mind, people were still kind of like Americans, or wanted to be. Until Mr. Wiggins came along, and we studied the peace-loving Pygmies of the Belgian Congo, and also the warlike Yanomami of the...
Source: Susan's Blog - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs