Nelson Obama Commencement Address Analysis

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”1 – Nelson Mandela. Education is the foundation of our society nowadays. Without it we would probably still live as they did back in the Stone Age. The younger generation must accept the importance of education, as it will benefit themselves and the society as well. In the speech “Commencement Address” at Bowie State University, May 17th 2013, she wants to deliver a message about the importance of an education with the aim to reach out to younger people especially the African American.
Her message gets clearer for the listener by the way she expresses her self and uses the language. Obama does it by carefully selecting her words and speaking in a chatty tone with
As mentioned before she uses all 3 forms of appeal to engage her audience, especially pathos and ethos in form of personal stories. She wants them to think about the issue of education and how passionate she is about it. Obama builds a strong ethos in the speech to make herself trustworthy. She does this by mentioning prominent people who struggled for better education and better lives, including both a member of the audience and Obama’s own father – making this personal on her part as well as theirs. Another way she engages the audience is when Obama directly addresses the people sitting in her audience, the speech especially becomes much more personal for those people. This is seen in the beginning of the address, in which she specifically mentions President Burnim, the head of the university, the class of 2013 and their family members (L. 1-12). There are other examples throughout her speech she is clearly speaking directly to these graduates in particular. She mentions Bowie State and its importance for the movement to bring education to African Americans (L. 30-38). She also quotes the school song (L. 225-228, 318-319) mentions one of the graduates by their name and shares a part of her life story with the audience (L. 204-217). By putting her broad perspectives into the specific context of Bowie State University, she clarifies that the points made are not just general observations. They are very relevant for this specific
Obama often speaks out about these issues within educational contexts. Using a combination of these issues help getting her message across, yet this time she does it untraditionally. She highlights a contrast between the past and the present to set up this message. She speaks about the previous generation of African Americans historically, mentioning their will to risk their lives in order to get their right to education: “But despite the risks, understand, students flocked to these schools in droves, often walking as many as eight to ten miles a day to get their education.” (L. 95-99). To compare this to present day, she describes the young generation of today, who seem uninterested in education and wasting their time being lazy and having unrealistic and unproductive dreams: “Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they’re sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper” (L. 171-177). This contrast shows us the main message of her speech. It is a wake-up call for today’s youth about the importance of education. Especially for the African-Americans, to whom the points out the irony of their laziness in particular. African Americans have finally achieved equal access to education, all thanks to the sacrifices their ancestors who fought for it,