Graduation Speeches Provide Discussion Far Beyond Graduates

Often with the craziness of graduation season, book groups either take a break or end up with half the group having not read the book of the month.  For a less time-consuming alternative, check out the many facets of graduation speeches.  Here are a few ways to select and compare graduation speeches that may be meaningful to your group.

Selecting Graduation Speeches

1. Have each group member find a graduation speech from his or her own graduation or a relative’s graduation.  Many colleges and some high schools keep a record of graduation speeches online.  More recent graduation speeches are often posted on youtube.com  
2. Scroll through speeches selected by NPR as the best commencement speeches, ever. Select a few for the entire group to read or have each member select one that is meaningful to him or her.
3. Find speeches from some of the frequent commence speakers— presidents, TV personalities, authors— and compare their speeches across the years or across colleges.
4. Select several graduation speeches from a year 10. 20 or more years in the past (perhaps the era when your book group members graduated high school or college) and compare them to a selection of speeches given this spring.

Discussion Topics

Blast from the Past

Can you find common themes across speeches from past years?  On the whole were the speeches more optimistic or pessimistic across different eras?  Were predictions of the future made?   If so, have those predictions born out or been avoided?

Your Graduation Speeches

What do you recall about the speeches you heard as a student?  Do you remember who the speakers were?  The tone?  The topics?  How were your high school graduation speakers chosen? How would you like high school speakers to be chosen?

The Value of Graduation Speeches

Why do you think the tradition of speeches at college being given by famous (or at least noteworthy) individuals began?  What is the benefit of the speeches to the graduates?  To their supporters?  To the world at large?

Then and Now

Were you able to discern common themes across speeches from a past decade?  What themes do you see emerging in this years’ crop of graduation speeches?  How are themes similar or divergent?  How do the topics and tones of speeches reflect the current era and in what ways are they timeless?

Speaker Potential

Read through Cristina Negrut's NPR blog post on the 25 Most Promising Graduation Speeches of the Year.  Do you agree or disagree with her categorizations?  What is your reaction to the speakers she has singled out?  Which of these speakers would you most like at your child's graduation?