Comments by Invited Guest
Prof. Judith M. Burton

Graduating students, parents, husbands wives and friends, honored guests and TC colleagues, good evening and welcome to graduation. Congratulations to our graduates on the success of your well earned degree. I bring good wishes to you, on this important day, from the faculty and students of the Department of the Arts and Humanities at Teachers College Columbia University. They cannot all be here to greet you in person, so I must represent them, and pass on to you their warmest greetings and hopes for your future success.

I am especially delighted to be here today to join in the celebration of your mastery of the English language. To speak a second language in this world today is a practical necessity, and also offers you the opportunity to reflect on your own and, perhaps, come to know it differently. As the German poet Goethe said " Who does not know another language does not know his own". By this, I think he meant that in order to find particular meaning in the words and sentences of another language, you become acutely aware of those meanings in your own. Not only this, but you also come to realize that quite often there are shades of meaning in another language that simply do not exist in your own, or are shaded quite differently. As we know, it is often the lack of acknowledgment of these differences in language use, that creates difficulties and misunderstandings among the nations of the world.

But, different languages can also bring us together. Like you, I too speak a different language. Unfortunately it is not Japanese! I speak in a language of visual images and know that ideas can be encountered, expressed and communicated that are beyond the reach of single verbal language. We have other languages too, such as, music and dance, each of which offer particular insights into our world of experience that are equally distinctive. Your culture is particularly rich in all these languages: your great temples, shrines, colorful rituals, theater and ceremonies which, when taken together, give Japan its distinctive character. Poetry does this in verbal language, it takes the listener or speaker beyond description beyond instrumental communication. Poetry allows us to probe deeper meanings, insights, and feelings, and offers us the opportunity to share experiences in truly profound ways. As the English poet Shelly told us "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". Poetry brings us together in common human cause and across geographical boundaries.

I speak of languages, of different languages, and how they not only communicate important thoughts and ideas but how they allow us to probe new meanings in our own language, and how they focus us on what it means to be human in a human world. It is the languages of the arts, including poetry, that open us to others across national boundaries and different cultures because they tap into profound and deep human experiences we all have. As you go back into your schools as teachers of another language, or as you begin a new career as a teacher of English, I hope you will not forget the poetic uses of the language you teach and the power of this language to touch us deeply and open us to others with insights and feeling.. Too often we leave children with a fine technical understanding of a language but we overlook its soul, its capacity to reach into the human heart and open it to other human hearts. It was Shelly again who said that a poem is "the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth".

Thank you so much for inviting me here today to share this moment with you, I feel very privileged. I wish everyone of you the very best for your future success and hope that one day we may welcome you to our campus in New York.