Mary Anne Mohanraj | Mary Anne Mohanraj
Mary Anne Mohanraj | Mary Anne Mohanraj
The Oak Park River Forest high school graduation celebration was held June 4th, with their own district board member, Mary Anne Mohanraj, giving a speech about how graduates should address life moving forward.
Mohanraj is a self-proclaimed storyteller, with her “day job” being a professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago. She also spends her time writing and publishing short story erotica, as well as other genres.
"Here are my two specific asks: that you help when you can in immediate ways… and that you simultaneously question everything, be willing to change everything," Mohanraj said. "I want you to go out there, take your education in your own hands, create new, better stories, and then use them to fix the world."
Her speech started with stories of how her young son struggled for a time in school, being perceived as troublesome, and the societal questions Mohanraj considered at the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. This led her to advise the graduates, “All of our social systems, all of them, were set up by people like you and me. People coming together and saying, ‘if we do this, it will make our children safer, it will make our lives more prosperous, it will help keep a roof over people’s heads and food on the table.’ Those initial instincts are idealistic and often high minded, but they can also ossify over time. The way we decided to do it becomes the way we have always done it. And that is very resistant to change.”
She asked, “What is school actually for? How is it structured? Is it serving all of our young people?”
Mohanraj went on to talk about change.
“Maybe we make education a real priority and say we want to invest in an educated society because we believe it will make us all richer in the end," she said. "Any class you want to take in any point in your life, we’re going to pay for it. Or maybe we should get rid of school altogether and find a new way to educate everyone. Maybe we'll get rid of insurance companies too and provide universal health care to all. Maybe we'll abolish prisons too.“
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