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Laugh and Maintain Your Dignity

Every year my church doles out over $60,000 in scholarships to help 30 or so high school graduates defray the cost of a college education. I am proud of my church. I consider the efforts of the Scholarship Committee to be true extension of the church's mission, which includes the educational excellence of African Americans.

Each spring, as part of their fund raising activities, the committee asks past scholarship recipients to deliver a brief speech on how important this scholarship has been to their education. I have listened to these little speeches for years. All of them are well written, rehearsed, and expertly delivered. Clearly the church has gotten her monies worth. Unfortunately it seems a little too polished. I get the uneasy feeling that the kids delivering the speeches are saying all of the right things but that they really don't understand a word of it. They seem to be guided by some kind of automatic thank you pilot. I sit there and listen as these students eloquently describe their college careers and explain how none of this would have been possible were it not for the generosity of the church.

This all sounds good, but the parents sitting there all know the truth. We would mortgage our souls to get our kids out of the house and enrolled in something after high school. The image of some giant lout sitting in your house all day while you are at work, scratching themselves and eating everything that sits still is too grim to contemplate. But we all sit and clap encouragingly even though we all know it's a crock.

One young lady delivered her speech through halting sobs that choked off all of her words in mid-syllable. I could not tell whether we had given her a few bucks to further her studies or she had witnessed the second coming. But her emotion let me know that she really appreciated whatever it was she thought we had done for her.

My son, another recipient of the reward, gave a coherent though far less impassioned speech. At least he was honest. It's not like the church handed him the $3,000 in cash. They wisely sent the money directly to the school. Had they given the money to him he may have delivered a tear-stained address thanking the church for the used car, basketball shoes and dozens of video games that he purchased.

The scholarship ministry, though well meaning, had completely missed the mark in terms of who should be giving the speeches on the benefits of the Scholarship Fund. Had these good people really

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