Speaker to graduates: You’re not special. (But his speech is.)
June 8, 2012
by Maureen Downey
Lots of discussion nationally this week about this clever commencement speech, delivered last week to Wellesley High School seniors by English teacher David McCullough, Jr. (The upscale, high-achieving school is in Massachusetts.)
While McCullough tells students they are not special, the speech ends up at the usual place: Do good. Do well. Do something. The road to that ending is paved with great lines, including, “The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer. You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–quite an active verb, “pursuit”–which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots roller skate on Youtube.”
(And, yes, McCullough is the son of the noted historian.) the rest
posted by Pat Dague @ 7:39 AM
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1 Comments:
To be perfectly honest, I was all fired up to rant and rave about this speech, how dare this teacher try to strip away the self-esteem from these graduates.
Fortunately, I actually listened to the speech and read a transcript too, so I moved past the knee-jerk reaction. And this speech is definitely not about destroying dreams or pounding graduates into the ground. Nowhere in this speech is he saying "You're not special and you never will be". To me, it seems like he's saying "You're not special right now". That they're not special by default. So by "special", it seems he means "entitled".
And that's a tricky subject to tackle. There is a growing culture of entitlement and there are graduates who are part of it, but I've no patience with anyone who harps away on the subject as though all graduates consider themselves entitled. And David McCullough didn't harp away on it. He made the point clear, certainly, but the respect he has for those graduates is pretty obvious too. He wants them to chase their dreams, he wants them to get the most out of life. Those lines about climbing the mountain to see the world, not so they can be seen, I simply don't see how they can be construed as anything other than chasing their dream because it's their dream, not because of how it's perceived by others.
I sincerely wish that our graduation speaker at university had come up with something like this. To hear him tell it, there were plenty of graduate jobs out there, none of us were going to have any problems, we were all the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And no, I didn't believe him. I felt immensely patronised, not comforted. What we really need to hear was "Things are tough out there, but you've proved you're no stranger to hard-work. You're equal to what's out there."
That, at least, would have been helpful. And honest.
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