The Unfinished Business of Education
A reflection on school life, lifelong learning, and the ambitious spirit of Seattle’s youth in 1876.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The end not yet. Though school life has brought to us experiences which it is perhaps appropriate to call an end, it has been only preparatory. The powers of the mind, while cultivated, its faculties developed and the idea that it is to ever overcome obstacles of all kinds, claim our attention. The process of concentration is a very important one; for while the attention is divided, or the mind distracted by a variety of objects, it can apprehend nothing clearly and definitely. If the intellectual faculties are not brought to a focus, and if a clear and well-defined image is not impressed on the mind, it receives nothing but a shadowed and confused outline.
As we enter these halls for the last time as students, we realize that ties must be severed before we cross the threshold. Were it not that the future with its golden promises looms up brightly before us, and that we desire to realize the sweet pleasures of home, we should be loth to leave a place fraught with pleasant associations. But as we ascend the hill of science, we can review the path on which we have trod and thus live over in memory the pleasant days enjoyed in the vales and labyrinths through which we have passed.
“The more we learn, the more there is to learn, so we grow younger in contemplating the numerous fields of science as yet unexplored.”
This 1876 valedictory address mirrors the same anxiety and ambition found in modern graduation speeches, where the 'end' of school feels like a monumental shift. It serves as a reminder that Seattle’s culture of self-improvement and intellectual striving has been a constant thread throughout the city’s development, dating back to when the town was just a cluster of mill buildings.
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