Valedictorian Address

Written by Cedar Bennett at age 15

Although I cannot be with you on this graduation day, I wish to extend my fond regards to the California Ranch School and L. Ron Hubbard. These are doubtless sentiments shared by the rest of the graduating class. The hitherto unexplored frontier of education which has so thoroughly been tamed by Mr. Hubbard with his study technology has provided the fortunate class of 1997 with a means to become learned, with a means to comprehend, and with a means to effect a change for the better upon the somewhat sorry thing called modern society.

We are the new generation. The future lies very much in our own hands, in the hands of the young and the brave, and those courageous enough to live their dreams in reality. A superlative education, then, could be considered a veritable sextant with which the youthful navigators of today may realize their goals in the tumultuous sea of life.

I owe quite a lot to those who had the patience to teach me how to read and to write, and all the rest of my education, though I was never by any means inherently endowed with some extraordinary wit which seems to constitute the born scholar. I thank, then, from the bottom of my heart the greatest of friends and tutors, my mother and father. Not, however, to give false impressions of exclusion, I make the following expansive statement of thanks to all the teachers whom I learned from, and of course, Carlynn McCormick. It would sound inopportunely flippant to state that I hope I may do the same for you some day, but in all sincerity I promise you that the efforts you employed to teach me were not received in vain. If all my generation could have as comprehensive an education as my fellow California Ranch School graduates, the future would look very bright indeed. And perhaps it does at that.