Selected Transcripts
Inauguration of Dr. Gregory J. Vincent '83
Tyler Fuller '18
Student Reading
October 27, 2017
Hello, I’m Tyler Fuller from the Hobart Class of 2018.
The following is an excerpt from The Purpose of Education, a speech delivered at Morehouse College in 1948 by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
"It seems to me that education has a two-fold function…the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.
"Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda…To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
"The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society…
"We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living."