Propriety and Graduations

I went to my neice's college graduation recently. I was surprised by the poor behavior of some of the students.

Some students were whooping and hollering during a violin perfomance. The violinist was a graduating senior who was graduating summa cum laude with a 4.0 average. He was playing a complicated and challenging piece for the audience and you could not hear his playing over some of the hollering by some jerks.

Then the president of the university went to the microphone and told the students this was not a basketball game, but the rude behavior continued. Those students had no concept of appropriate behavior.

Confucians, I thought to myself, would not act like that -- cat-calling during an artist's performance. Propriety, Li, is a Confucian virtue. The Confucian tradition, also called the Ru Jia tradition, has a lot to offer America.

Robert