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."
Source: New York Daily News
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