Graduation Day. Woo hoo! Way to go, kid! You did it! What a stellar achievement! You rock!
These were not the words a Massachusetts high-school teacher named David McCullough, who gave a graduating class Wellesley, west of Boston, a speech to remember. But it wasn't the usual bolstering kind of send-off. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"Do not get the idea you’re anything special," he said. "Because you’re not...Contrary to what your…soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh-grade report card [suggest]…you’re nothing special."
McCullough claims he went heavy on the realism in order to counter what he called the pampering "epidemic" of American parents, insisting we shouldn't go around congratulating our children's "every tiny achievement."
"If everyone is special," he reasoned, "no one is." He stressed to Fox News that kids "need to stumble—so often parents are there to throw pillows on the floor."
Great commencement speeches are meant to linger on in the minds of the young and wet-behind-the-ears. Think Steve Jobs to the bright young things at Stanford ("Stay hungry, stay foolish") or even wisecracking Conan O’Brien to still more bright young things at Harvard ("Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally")?
Is his tough approach right? Don't kids need some encouragement in order to know we feel pride in their achievements?
Printer-friendly version