Last month at Coxsackie-Athens High School in Coxsackie, N.Y., an 18-year-old girl who rose to the top of her graduating class embraced her valedictory speech as an opportunity to deliver a pointed message to the educational system that molded her.

“School is not all that it can be,” Erica Goldson told her teachers and school administrators, her peers and their parents. “Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.” Her speech has created a minor buzz online.

I don’t agree with every gripe Goldson voiced. Most children need educational goals to excel, and tests are the best way to gauge student progress toward those goals. Based on the awkward delivery (see the video below), I also doubt that Goldson spoke from her own inspiration. I suspect that an adult who hates authority, structure and the “evil corporate world” unduly influenced her.

But as a whole, her speech is worth a read. Here are some of the high points:

• I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. … I did what I was told to the extreme.
• I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.
• Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.
• Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
• We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be — but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.