Mike asks why educators are on board with student empowerment in principle, but have a difficulty enacting it. Have schools become more like places of obedience and less like places fostering free expression? He also questions a past decision when he was a principal in which he coached a valedictorian to revise her graduation speech to limit possible backlash and criticism. At the time he convinced himself that he was supporting intellectual independence, but in retrospect may have just been reinforcing obedience by having her tailor her speech, so that it fit some unwritten standard about what graduation ceremonies are about.