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Old 10-06-12, 05:51   #1
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Default ...graduating students: you’re not special

High school teacher tells graduating students: you’re not special
Commencement speech aims to deflate self-important kids

By Meghan Neal


He gets points for being blunt, at least.

A straight-talking English teacher at Wellesley High School set out to take students down a notch in his speech to the class of 2012, by telling them they’re nothing special.

“You are not special. You are not exceptional,” David McCullough Jr. told graduating seniors from the affluent Massachusetts town last weekend.

The teacher's controversial advice caught the nation's eye, in an age where many believe today's youth suffer from a sense of self-importance.

"Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped," McCullough said in his speech. “Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You've been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You've been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. ... But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not."

Driving the point home, he added, "Think about this: even if you're one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you."

The teacher warned students that Americans have come to appreciate accolades more than genuine achievement, and will compromise standards in order to secure a higher spot on the social totem pole.

"As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of the Guatemalans," he said.

In the quest for accomplishment, everything gets watered down. A 'B' is the new 'C.' Midlevel courses are the new advanced placement, the teacher said.

The reaction to the teacher's blunt advice was overwhelmingly positive, both from students at the receiving end of the reality check and people who saw the speech as it circulated the Internet this week.

"For once someone told us what we need to hear and not necessarily what we wanted to hear," said one commenter on The Swellesley Report.

"Undoing all 'they've' done in on 10-minute speech. My faith in the world may have been restored," another commenter said.

McCullough, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, explained his provocative words on Fox News Wednesday, saying kids need to struggle and stumble to make it in today's difficult, competitive world, but too often parents are there to throw the pillows on the floor.

"So many of the adults around them — the behavior of the adults around them — gives them this sort of inflated sense of themselves. And I thought they needed a little context, a little perspective," McCullough told Fox News. "To send them off into the world with an inflated sense of themselves is doing them no favors."


I read this and just had to bring it for comment. Before I get off into it, I'd like to state how I feel and how I stand so it is clear when you the reader, read these comments.

I don't suppose I had any easier nor rougher life as a kid than anyone else. Didn't necessarily look for it to be easy; just wanted an honest chance. I also don't look at kids today and think the world is going to hel-lo in a hand basket. Kids are the future and one day they will do the work of the country as well as run it. They can't do those jobs and tasks without common everyday realities. I don't think they are really any worse than my generation when we were growing up, they've just had a bit different upbringing because things in life changed for them, like computers, the internet, and cell phones, as an example.

What I do know, is working a job is a great equalizer. You rapidly find out that an orange and purple spiked hair do isn't going to cut it where the company that hires you says you are our face to the public. You want to get paid so you can eat, you'll look the way we want. You'll do the job like we want it and you will act in the proscribed way we are paying you to be with the customer. If you can't do that, someone else will.

I've had a lot of interaction from time to time with the younger generation. I can tell you they have a lot to learn for the most part. I've heard young folk try to argue science with TV theme topics. I've heard them state things like everyone over 50 should retire so they can have a job. I've heard companies state in amazement that young new hires think they should be placed as CEO or senior management as their first job. That it shouldn't be necessary for them to work their way up. It's what they've learned from tv. Go to work today and be the boy wonder doing $5 million dollar stock trades tomorrow.

Now you know that isn't really a realistic attitude nor set of expectations. But look where the kids are coming from. Their parents pretty much told the whole generation they were special. Which is what this teacher is trying to break to them.

This is not about one of those, "Why when I was growing up we had to walk 5 miles in the snow to return the library books and it was all up hill...both ways". Rather it's about the real world. These kids have been lucky in that their folk wanted them to have things. Cell phones, TVs of their own, video games, all of it pretty much given to them because their peers had them. I've even read last year where self-entitled kids were throwing fits in the chat rooms because they didn't get the cell phone/new car they expected for Xmas. Cursing their parents with no realization of what it took to get that.

This is what this teacher is trying to tell them they are fixing to hit head on in the real world out there. That it's not like it was at home.
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