Valedictorian Complains of "Hollow" Public School Education

From Cybercast News Service:

(CNSNews.com) - The valedictorian of a Blue Ribbon-awarded high school in New Jersey has left teachers and administrators with a sour taste in their mouths after using his June 20 valedictory speech to describe his education as "hollow" and one filled with "countless hours wasted in those halls."

"I felt like the most important questions were not asked." said Kareem Elnahal, the top rated student at Mainland Regional High School in Linwood, N.J. "Things like ethics, things that defined who we are, were ignored so in that way I thought it was hollow." he told Cybercast News Service Wednesday.

Mainland High School was ranked 403rd among the nation's top 1,200 schools in Newsweek Magazine's "America's Best High Schools" report from August 2005.

But at the June 20 commencement, Elnahal told his audience that "the education we have received here is not only incomplete, it is entirely hollow."

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Elnahal told Cybercast News Service that teachers refused to discuss certain topics because they were too closely tied to religious views. In his valedictory speech, he argued that there is a connection between a person's faith and that person's power of reasoning.

"Is there a creator? And if so, should we look to it for guidance," Elnahal asked the audience gathered at the high school graduation ceremony. "These are often dismissed as questions of religion, but religion is not something opposed to rationality. It simply seeks to answer such questions through faith."

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(emphasis added)