Do You Have a Love of Learning?

In the season of graduations, cap and gowns and celebrations, speeches and uplifting words bubble over like a champagne toast.

Motivational words to young graduates can be surpirisngly appropriate for workng professionals, to remind us of the idealism and optimism that guided our initial fervor and feeling that the world was at our fingertips. 

One of the topics may graduates contemplate is information. What do they do with all the information in their mind? 

David McCullough, in his 2008 Commencement address to Boston College outlines several reasons why the love of learning, rather than the information is the key to success.  Below are some excerpts from his address.

"Information. Information at our fingertips. Information without end...

The Library of Congress has 650 miles of shelves and books in 470 languages...Napoleon was afraid of cats ....A porcupine is born with 30,000 quills.... A mosquito beats its wings 600 times per second.... Coal production in the United States is second only to that of China... It's said ad infinitum: ours is the Information Age. There's never been anything like it since the dawn of creation. We glory in the Information Highway as other eras gloried in railroads. Information for all! Information night and day!

... A column of air a mile square, starting 50 feet from the ground and extending to 14,000 feet contains an average of 25,000,000 insects.... James Madison weighed less than a hundred pounds, William Howard Taft, 332 pounds, a presidential record.... According to the World Almanac, the length of the index finger on the Statue of Liberty is 8 feet.... The elevation of the highest mountain in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock, is 3,487 feet.... The most ancient living tree in America, a bristlecone pine in California, is 4,700 years old...

Information is useful. Information is often highly interesting. Information has value, sometimes great value. The right bit of information at the opportune moment can be worth a fortune. Information can save time and effort. Information can save your life. The value of information, facts, figures, and the like, depends on what we make of it -- on judgment.

But information, let us be clear, isn't learning. information isn't poetry. Or art. Or Gershwin or the Shaw Memorial. Or faith. It isn't wisdom.

Facts alone are never enough. Facts rarely if ever have any soul. In writing or trying to understand history one may have all manner of"data," and miss the point. One can have all the facts and miss the truth. It can be like the old piano teacher's lament to her student, "I hear all the notes, but I hear no music.

If information were learning, you could memorize the World Almanac and call yourself educated. Ifyou memorized the World Almanac, you wouldn't be educated. You'd be weird!

Learning is not to be found on a printout. It's not on call at the touch ofthe finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books. And from teachers, and the more learned and empathetic the better. And from work, concentrated work.

Abigail Adams put it perfectly more than 200 years ago: "Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought with ardor and attended with diligence." Ardor, to my mind, is the key word.

For many of you the love of learning has already taken hold. For others it often happens later and often by surprise, as history has shown time and again. That's part ofthe magic."

"Make the love of learning central to your life."

"Go out and get the best jobs you can and go to work with spirit. Don't get discouraged. And don't work just for money. Choose work you believe in, work you enjoy. Money enough willfollow. Believe me, there's nothing like turning to every day to do work you love.

Walk with your heads up. And remember, honesty is the best policy; and that is from Cervantes.

Travel as much as you can, and wherever you go, before checking out of a hotel or motel, always remember to tip the maid.

My wannest congratulations. In the words of the immortal Jonathan Swift, "May you live all the days of your life."

On we go."

To download the full version of David McCullough's address, click here.