Excerpt from "You Are Not Special" by David McCullough Jr.
Foreword
Late in the afternoon of June 1, 2012, I gave a commencement speech. My audience, or so I thought, was seated there before me, the senior class of the public high school in Wellesley, a suburb west of Boston, where I teach English. I did not know the electronic world was eavesdropping, nor would I have thought anyone beyond earshot would take an interest in what I might say. Within a few days, though—thanks initially, it seems, to a line or two taken out of context—my speech and I became international headlines. Suddenly I was the “you’re not special” guy.
From Berlin to Beijing, Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere went crazy. The video, which I did not know was being shot, went viral. My e-mail in-box exploded. My voice mail overflowed. Local, national and international print reporters, radio people, television people scrambled to interview me. Pundits and provocateurs everywhere climbed onto their soapboxes to gas about the speech and me and kids today. Letters of appreciation began arriving. Long-lost students and friends checked in. Limousines appeared in my driveway. On the street strangers stopped to praise and thank me and take my picture. Sane-seeming people urged me to run for office. Far-flung rabbis, priests and ministers borrowed from and sermonized about what I’d said. It was sudden, surreal and gratifying. All because of a twelve-minute speech.
And I, a somewhat ruminative sort perfectly content with a quiet life and disinclined to opinionize, scratched my head.
My hope that afternoon—my only hope—was to be helpful to the graduates. This was simply good-bye and good luck to a group of kids I liked very much and knew pretty well, kids for whom I felt responsible. Moments after I sat down they would be done forever with high school, with childhood, and off to the rest of their lives. We were releasing them to the wild, and mine were last-minute reminders, instructions and a fond fare-thee-well.
The substance of my remarks came from a growing concern about what I’ve been seeing over the last several years, in my classroom, around school, across the culture, in my own household. Spurred by well-meaning but all too often micromanaging parents with resources to expend, teenagers in great number are becoming ever more preoccupied with conspicuous achievement—often at the expense of important formative experiences. Many are suffering from (or, rather, enjoying) inflated notions of themselves and regard every opportunity as theirs for the asking, every accolade their due. “We’re not superior . . . ,” which popular notions of equality and fairness inculcated since pre-K prohibit them from thinking, “. . . we’re just special.” Glowing successes, they assume, and therefore much happiness, will naturally follow. In this new cult of exceptionalism, to be average, just a regular kid—for most an unavoidable statistical fact—is to be thought inferior. To be ordinary is to be left behind.
No wonder so many of our children are having trouble recognizing what matters. No wonder so many—underprepared and anxious—are having trouble finding their way. I’m not the first, certainly, to notice what’s happening, nor the first to share his concerns, but twenty-six years in a high school classroom, and the teenagers in my own house, have afforded me certain insights.
Hence this book.
In its way, though, my experience has been narrow, limited to two excellent and well-heeled suburban schools several thousand miles apart—one public, one private: Wellesley High for ten years and, before that, Punahou School in Honolulu for sixteen. In that time more than four thousand students have come through my classroom, almost all of whom have been interested and kind and cooperative and receptive to my efforts. In their company I’ve enjoyed innumerable satisfactions and many laughs and much fond- ness. I’ve also had supportive administrators and able, inspiring colleagues—and, but for the rare exception, parents have left me to my work with generous encouragement. I’ve loved every day of my teaching life and have prized every affirmation. I recognize how lucky I am in all of this. This book, then, is an expression of thanks to the educators, parents and kids, mostly the kids, who’ve given so very much to me . . . and of admiration for those who work wonders under conditions far less ideal.
I write in sympathy with parents, too. Janice, my wife, and I have four children—three of whom are teenagers—and we often find ourselves subject to the same temptations and cultural encouragements that can prove so problematic.
I know, then, why and whereof I write; I’m in the middle of it.
In many ways adolescents have never had it better. Opportunity, at least for some, would seem nearly limitless in scope and number and wow factor. But, for fear that left to themselves children will screw up their shot at the cultural plums, many parents have reduced to just about nil their children’s latitude for independence, for pursuing an impulse to explore, for taking a risk, for enduring struggles, experiencing failure and figuring out what to do about it. We’re all over them everywhere they turn—in no small measure because we see in them such quality, such potential. Or hope we do. And shouldering into fifty-pound backpacks, the kids are off to their next obligation, trying to remember what they’re supposed to be thinking. Then they’ll want to know if it’s going to be on the test, and I won’t be asking for, like, quotes, will I, and is it okay if they study with a friend, and could I just go over the, like, key points one more time, and maybe post them online, too, please, and if they, like, happen to have a bad day or something, could I allow a retest or at least, you know, scale the grades?
To question their mind-set does not occur to them. They feel neither indulged nor directed nor dependent. Nor, for that matter, fretful, naïve, self-absorbed, or soft. What they feel is perfectly normal—although they sense they’re disapproved of by certain old people for reasons they don’t quite get. Yes, they’re aware of other perspectives and of people less fortunate, but the conditions under which they live set for them their norm. And what they see all around are kids a lot like themselves. In fact, put to it, many privileged teenagers would, against their better judgment, intimate with a note of envy that the disadvantaged are the real advantaged for the sympathy they enjoy, the excuses their circumstances provide, the honest pride they’ve earned from enduring hard knocks, their more legitimate claims to cool. With apologies to Mr. Kristofferson, nothing to lose looks to many privileged kids an awful lot like freedom. With their privilege, though, come expectations, and with expectations comes stress, and stress can be uncomfortable. Troubling to them, too, is the thought that anything they might achieve will be dismissed as just another dividend of undeserved advantage. At some level even teenagers understand you can’t ride the chairlift and call yourself Edmund Hillary.
But they’re just kids, of course. Works in progress. Neurologically unfinished. To expect of them far-reaching perspectives and informed objectivity, even fair-mindedness, particularly about themselves, is unreasonable. Nor did they choose the circumstances under which they’re being raised. As with most other things, that was done for them.
And these are strivers with blinders on. They’re trained, harnessed and directed to perform, to have answers and have them first, to earn As, score goals, play Bach, to prove themselves always and forever special. In everything they do, then, the stakes seem to them frightfully high. Any sign of a wobble and in step their parents. These are children, let’s remember, whose framed ultrasound images still sit on dresser tops, whose parents’ Facebook postings spill freely into the boastful, whose holiday cards are handsome, back-lit portraits of them accompanied by single-spaced missives recounting the year’s triumphs. From birth plus a day or two they’re strapped into the car seat and in a sense never get out—they’re protected, driven and aimed in one direction. Ballyhooed from the hind end of the SUV “Baby on Board” to “My Child Was Student of the Month at Shady Grove Middle School” to “Amherst College,” they’re whisked to volleyball showcases, cello recitals, chess tournaments, speed and agility training, calculus camp, attitude tutorials, “brain training.” The expectation—or ardent hope—is that every dividend will soon follow. Mothers and fathers are the strategic planners, the general managers, the CFOs, the PR and marketing departments, the chauffeurs, and, should something go awry, the troubleshooters. Should catastrophe strike—not enough playing time in the big game, a B−on the research paper, a prom dress crisis—they’re the cavalry.
This isn’t true for every child, of course. But it sure is for a lot of them.
And their fun, their moments of restorative repose, of recreational self-determination, of simple goofing around, have been co-opted by their parents as well. Today’s teenagers are veterans of “playdates.” Away from school, away from lacrosse practice and Mandarin lessons, parents chose with whom, when, where, for how long, and often at what they would play. As big kids they’re no less protected, no less managed: they’re driven to and from hyperorganized sporting events at which coaches yell, refs whistle and parents cheer, cry foul and instruct. With hands-on guidance from adults they backpack the Sierras, raft the wild Colorado, zip-line the Costa Rican rain forest, stroll the charming streets of Prague, build irrigation systems in Zimbabwe and photograph the picturesque Zimbabweans. They fund-raise to end diabetes, protect endangered species and stem global warming. They collect canned goods for the local food bank and tap-dance their hearts out in Anything Goes. Worthy endeavors all, absolutely—and gorgeous on the résumé. Meanwhile, they’re packed into AP and honors courses and SAT prep sessions. They’re sunscreened, water-bottled and helmeted. They’re taught, tutored and coached, sometimes harangued, and if need be medicated, out of every deficiency real and imagined. They’re expected, then, to thrive. To soar. For many expectation starts to feel like mandate, even inevitability. Should they not soar, though, or should our exasperation at seeing them amble or flounder or stray become too much—or the sound of our own hectoring voices
blister the paint—we seek to change the rules, or lower expectations, blind ourselves to perspective and call them accomplished just the same.
And why?
Today’s teenagers are, too many of them, unwitting victims of their parents’ good intentions—or passive agents of their parents’ vanity, or pawns to their parents’ insecurities, or anxieties, or limited imaginations. They’ve become showpieces in an arms race to impress admissions officers, and thereby the Joneses, and perpetuate the legacy of privilege. The competition is, after all, stiff out there. And from atop the stepladder of often considerable resources, kids can look pretty tall, and absolutely the view from up there can be wonderfully enriching. Too often, though, their privileges are unwisely expended, in my view, and serve to promote, however inadvertently, swelling narcissism, assumptions of entitlement, superficial and/or robotic thinking. Empathy withers. Maturation is slowed or halted altogether. Self-reliance dies in the bud. And the anxious parent feels compelled to intercede once again.
And they’re tired, teenagers are, all the time. They get half the sleep they need, an eighth of what they’d prefer. The fetish for a name-brand college is acquired, or imposed, so they play along. Like the rest of us they pick their battles, and in this one they know they’re Custer. They’re oversubscribed at school and overscheduled after. Even under the best of circumstances their eagerness to do homework registers down there with oral surgery, yet to them it feels like that’s all they do. Late into the night they trudge with fifty French vocab words, five questions to answer on the “Robber Barons and the Gilded Age” chapter, a lab report for chemistry, a ten-problem packet for math, a five-page analysis of Iago’s motivations . . . none of this is their idea of a rocking good time. A rocking good time is their idea of a rocking good time and then twelve hours of downy sleep.
But the loud demand of our schools these days is to produce high achievers in big numbers. Abetted by a laudable spirit of inclusion, concern for strugglers and impulses to innovate, this is most efficiently accomplished across the spectrum with lower standards, gentler assessments and inflated grades. Should a concerned or skeptical eyebrow go up, explain it away with earnestness, hip packaging and edu-jargon. Should intellectual acuity suffer, redefine the term. And because each school year builds on the one before it, the long-term effect is underprepared kids persuaded they’re doing perfectly well and have been, probably, for as long as they can remember. And since they don’t know what they don’t know, and not knowing has yet to prove much of an issue, they wonder what all the fuss might be. They care about indigenous peoples and the homeless and the melting of the polar ice caps, they made second team all-league, they floss their teeth and the report card shines, so where’s the problem? Chillax, they say.
And it’s not just how we’re assessing them. Much energy among faculties is devoted these days to concerns about “student stress” and “engaging young learners” in “student-centered
experiences” to which the “whole child” can “relate,” to providing opportunities in “holistic learning,” in “collaborative learning,” in which students develop a “skill set” and have “a personal investment” and are “empowered” to “think outside the box” and become part of a “community of lifelong learners.” Yet we grade them, too. Grades don’t matter, we preach ad infinitum, but what the hell is this C+? Further, schools have assumed, or have had foisted upon them, aspects of raising children formerly addressed at home. A teacher is no longer just a teacher, but a tutor, therapist, guru, nurse practitioner, Dutch uncle, minister without portfolio and cop on the beat. And for fear of appearing exclusionary or bruising a child’s self-esteem, teachers will minimize risk by reducing rigor, keeping goals within easy reach and throwing ever more confetti when he or she gets there.
Of course, if one stops for just a second to consider the brutalities that daily torment good and honest people the world around, that privileged teenagers are being micromanaged and indulged to their detriment seems an issue trivial in the extreme. If this is our big worry, then, well, we’re very lucky to have it. Meanwhile, worldwide more than 300 million children have no shoes . . . and the cupcakes have soccer cleats for grass and soccer cleats for turf and futsal shoes and basketball sneakers and just-knocking-around sneakers and running shoes and snowboarding boots and strappy leather sandals and Uggs and Vans and Timberlands and dressy shoes and somewhat dressy shoes and not at all dressy but, you know, fun shoes, and Hunters for the wet weather and cute little Toms in three different colors and preppy Sperrys and Merrells for the rock-climby look.
So let ’em eat quiche, one might be inclined to conclude, roll off to the country club and into fatuous, self-congratulating irrelevance. Who cares? We have, don’t we, a few more pressing concerns?
Well, I’ll suggest these indulged kids, our kids, could be, should be, part of the solution for a planet in sore need. With their advantages they could be, should be, leading the way. They could be, should be, each of them, among the ablest, clearest of head, best informed, best prepared, most inspired, most innovative, most empathetic, and, therefore, a great cause for hope, for confidence even, worldwide. In each is enormous promise—talent, imagination, energy, heart. This I know. We should be raising them, preparing them, with that in mind, setting our goals a little beyond sparkling lacrosse statistics, next month’s report card and, fingers crossed, a golden acceptance letter. We should see the comfort and security we enjoy and the resources at our disposal as opportunities, as responsibilities, to do the planet and those who inhabit it some good, to right what wrongs we can, to shoulder our share of the load and then some. And if our children are in no position to step up because of well-meant misallocations and assorted squanderings, whose will be? Of what purpose civilization if those welcome to the best it can offer wrap themselves in selfishness and delusion?
That some of us have gone a bit awry in raising our children, then, is in my view a danger. At risk is more than just the likelihood of productive, fulfilling lives. Alarmist though this may sound, send into it enough underrealized, overmatched kids and our civilization, or what these days is passing for it, will collapse upon itself, too hollow for its weight.
From "You Are Not Special: …And Other Encouragements" by David McCullough Jr. Copyright 2014 David McCullough Jr. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
