The Literary Voices of the Youth [Secondary level] Opening Remarks with the theme “The youth, the force and power to change the nation” held at ISA Gym on 16 September 2011
Distinguished Members of the Board of Judges, ISAers, Facilitators, Parents, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Good morning.
Literary Voices of the Youth is one of the major events in the ISA campus. I am not particularly surprised to note that many of our learners and facilitators have been looking forward to this event.
For who could resist the candid humour inherent in a declamation as interpreted and projected in the verbal and non‐verbal aesthetic articulation of the performers?
Who, if he has the luxury of time, would want to skip and miss an oratorical piece that rekindles human sensibility through the social issue it espouses? Oratorical pieces always ignite and continue to light up our hope to move on despite the overwhelming obstacles ahead of us.
The thrill of listening to someone who, given only a short 3‐minute time to compose his thought, is expected to elaborate on certain relevant issue, and be able to express his mind methodically and convincingly.
So long as there continues to exist intelligent specie on this planet, literary voices of the youth will never cease.
I am glad to notice that in our ISA campus, the literary voices of the youth are very much present, not only during the month of September, but all throughout the school year.
Probably, a good many of the members of the ISA community are like the character in Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentillhomme, Mr. Jourdain, who did not know that he spoke prose. They barely realize that they utter literary voices of the youth. Hence, they thought literary voices of the youth exist only in the abstract, on the stage where declamation or oration is delivered by someone who is particularly gifted.
Literary voices of the youth are nothing but the expression of the Truth, the Good, and the Beautiful. Ask yourself, therefore, if you are thinking, speaking, and doing whatever that is True, Good, and Beautiful. If so, then you are the literary voices of the youth. And not only are you the literary voices of the youth, you are “the force and power capable of changing the nation”.
Thank you.
