Wallace Delivers the speech "right in front of him"

David Wallace’s commencement speech ties in much with Rodriguez’s essay The Banking of Education.  While Rodriguez argues that education has now succumb to the thought of memorization rather than the ability to think for oneself, Wallace takes it one step further and  argues that it is not about thinking, it’s about choosing what principles to think of and which ones to disregard. Wallace uses common cliché “"the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master".  This, to me, is an excellent claim for his argument. Many times people find themselves thinking about their environment, creating conscious entities inside their heads, not intentionally, but as of a habit. The world around us influences every decision we make greatly. All the seamless bullshit that is part of our everyday lives that we tend to contemplate is what Wallace believes to be nonsense.

People have the innate idea that they are the centre of the world, or at least the centre of their life. We don’t think about it because as a society, we deemed it to be repulsive, to be a self-centered egotistic bastard. However, not a day goes by that I look at the world out of my eyes. My influenced perspectives and believes, whom play a common role in every decision I make, position me at the pinnacle of the [my] world. These influences deviate my mind from what is going on right in front of me. People pay attention to everything else but what they are supposed to.

An exemplary example is how Wallace delivers his speech. His speech does not consist of any stories [although he uses one to criticize] that tend to evoke sympathy or sorrow into the class. Wallace comes out straight forward and presents the ideas that he believes are the important ones to think of.

We humans tend to be self-absorbed and neglect other people’s more tedious and frustrating lives. Mother Nature made created us this way; to care about oneself and neglect others. Why do you think companies advertise to donate a dollar a day to help a child in need? Because as self-centered as we are, we only see what is right in front of us. We don’t think about other people whom we are not familiar with. Not many people are willing to give money to others. Why? Well, plainly we just don’t care. We are too absorbed into our lives that we do not contemplate about things that do matter. Instead of helping a child in need, we buy a PS3 to keep us busy.

Maybe that’s why education sucks in this country? Our “American” minds don’t care.