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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

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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