2
The school environment has always had a most important part
to play in character building. In Hong Kong we need educated young
people with a sense of vision and initiative who are willing and able
to contribute to our community.
Now, many of you will be leaving school this year and will
-----18
be stepping out for the first time into the wider world of Hong Kong:
a few may even be going overseas.
Some of you will go on to university
or some other form of tertiary education, others perhaps into the world
of commerce.
I hope you will carry with you not only what you have grasped
academically but what you have acquired by example during the years
you have spent here. Learning the contribution you as an individual
can make to a group or team: learning the need to care for others
through community involvement: learning to develop your own personal
and special talents in creative activity: and being given responsibilities,
the encouragement to participate actively in school life through the
Student Council: all these help to form you into mature, well-balanced
and confident people.
The experiences gained here at Maryknoll are building for you
a "bank-balance" for the future which will prove of very great value:
the sort of "bank-balance" which really matters. Here in the materialism
of Hong Kong, too much store is placed on how much money somebody has in
the bank, or how many cars he has.
I look to the day when one tests the value of a person not from
his worldly wealth, nor from the colour of his skin, or his race or his
religion but from the component parts of his character.
/Hong Kong