<p>"… it would seem a little strange to me if someone could reach senior year in high school without realizing that actual accomplishments matter, as opposed to the lines in a c.v. or the trophies."</p>
<p>Honestly, I think that many CC type parents and kids don’t get that point until sometime much later than senior year, at least with their oldest kid. That’s the source of all those threads here asking about whether it would be better to get a summer job or spend $3500 on a NYLF session, in terms of college applications.</p>
<p>Crossposted with Bovertine, who said it better than I did.</p>
<p>I agree with this and with your feelings about him denigrating marriage. Two other phrases struck me as disrespectful: “the spray-tanned prom queen,” and “swaggering jocks.” Most likely, there was a real-life prom queen in the audience, as well as numerous athletes. All of them may be serious students with average personalities and personal habits, and he insulted them with stereotypical adjectives.</p>
<p>If you read, you would realize that I was specifically referring to MOST of the students my school, and you don’t realize what the situation at my school is at all, so don’t judge. For someone who is so eager to preach about maturity, you are so quick to jump onto others for a perceived slight. I believe I made my point perfectly clear that I was not making broad generalizations. I would explain myself and how I really understand how people are in different situations than me and MOST of the people at my school, but it seems like you are simply uninterested in properly reading my posts.</p>
<p>Chaosakita, how do you know about the home situations of most people at your school?
Most people are very private, and even with friends and family can put on a good face.</p>
<p>For those of you critiquing this based on a transcript, it isn’t the same. A speech is intended to be heard once and it either hits or misses based on the one time experience. Quantum, interestingly I live in a Red state but personally I am blue through and through and I don’t see this difference in perception as being related to the sometimes incomprehensible division of opinions between blue and red. Personally I didn’t love the bash on marriage but I could still laugh and move on amused by the contrast between the permanence of a diploma and the unfortunate dubious perception of the permanence of marriage. I didn’t take the talk aboutnot being special as insulting although I expect in a room filled with students who made extrordinary sacrafices, grew up with neglect or who overcame unsurmountable odds to get to the point of achieving a diploma, it could have been taken that way. I expect that there were examples of those students in that room but I also expect they could recognize the characature of their peers and still find it humerous. Nothing said was directly pointed at anyone. In the end I think he tied it all together and I don’t think he lost the audience to insults which he would have if they were truely insulted. The way he pulled it together was empowering and freeing. With a message to live an meaningful life filled with passion and purpose.</p>
<p>Again listening once (in the wee hours of the morning with a bit of insomnia in my case) is a very different experience.</p>
<p>This is a terrible speech on a number of levels:</p>
<p>This is a high school commencement. I’ve never understood the need for hs commencement speeches, but if that’s the tradition of this school, so be it. However, just because this long-time English teacher has a captive and well-mannered audience doesn’t mean he has to unload on them. His speech would have been interesting at a college graduation; my guess is the heckling would be quite amusing.</p>
<p>And the speech, in and of itself, is clearly of invidious intent-and please, don’t try to rationalize it by saying it was meant to be funny. I’m not from the insult comic school of hs graduation speeches, and it’s poor form to vent on a captive audience. The speaker complains of things that haven’t occurred since GRADE school-trophy for doing nothing, etc. In its own way, hs is a great equalizer; his audience was full of kids who didn’t get As for the first time, who actually got cut from a sports team, who didn’t get into the college of his or her choice. While none of these is life altering, hs is the time that real-world competition begins to arise.
And the speaker’s intent is clear: he was speaking to an audience other than the grads-the media. I’ve seen article after article-ABC, Washington Post-my favorite is from the Boston Herald-“Finally, someone tells 'em how it is.” The amount of vitriol this speech engendered-all of it directed at this school’s(and all other schools’) graduates is amazing.
Really, who is this guy? He’s a “long time English teacher” at a well-funded public school. What, if anything, has he ever done to entitle him to “tell 'em like it is”?<br>
Are these kids cossetted? Perhaps some are; but let’s look at the world they are entering.
We live in a time just after the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression; this is their world, but the speaker’s generation created it.
And we live in the time of the war on terror; while these hs kids might not be “special” they are the ones fighting and dying; the forty-somethings like Mr. McCullough aren’t. And it makes no difference if some kids are enlisting out of hs or going to a service academy. If you graduate from West Point this year, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll be sent to a hot zone, facing combat with an implacable enemy. So the ones fighting and dying for us are the recipients of this tripe. Did the speaker serve in a war zone?
And what about the budget and the impending collapse of Social Security? These kids will have the opportunity to pay into a retirement plan to pay for the Social Security benefits of the speaker, but the likelihood is there will be nothing left for their retirement.
Maybe, just maybe, the speaker could have thanked the students for the future contributions to be made by the graduates; maybe he could have recognized that the world is a bit of mess, and we’re going to need their help to get it straightened out. Franky, I find nothing more irritating than this sense that the ones who follow are all pampered while we all struggled. It’s baloney; neither the speaker-nor anyone on this tread-lived through the Great Depression and helped rebuild the country after it; we’ve all had it pretty easy-Mr. McCullough included. It’s time to stop this mentality of “putting people in their place” and recognize their contributions. So stop by a veterans cemetary, and take a look at the headstones of the newly interred, and pause when you see the dates of birth and dates of death. For many, their last great social milestone was their high school graduation. Was this a fitting speech for them?</p>
<p>My D is special to me, but beyond that, out in the real world, she has to prove herself. I agree that outside the context of the family, it’s better to have the attitude that you are the same as everyone else until you prove otherwise.</p>
<p>The poll said 94% of people liked it. That’s all that matters to the speaker. He was speaking to HIS <specific> audience, not to every high school in the United States, and not to every parent in the United States. </specific></p>
<p>For example, what an Afghan Islamic leader gives as speech to its high school students in Afghanistan will not necesarily be appropriate if he gave it in a high school in the U.S.</p>
<p>Majority of teenagers in the U.S. think they have already proved that. And, statistically, a few of them really have. I wouldn’t want some jerk to stick a knife on those few and persuade them that they’re not special.</p>
</i>
<p>“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”</p>
<p>W.H. Auden</p>
<p>So think twice before you use the “real world” and “life is unfair” bullcrap to justify your actions. You might be hurting and turning someone from good to bad. And them blame them later for being a jerk or whatever they did.</p>
<p>Human nature, yeah? Let me guess: a majority of you probably are thinking, “It’s not my problem he’s easily hurt and changes like that.” </p>
<p>I think it’s a terrible speech. Frankly, I hate these kinds of speeches and they do a disservice to the graduates. </p>
<p>I know a 40ish tenured social science professor at an Ivy. She studied what’s known to be a useless major and then, lord have mercy, went on to get a PhD in her chosen useless field despite that statistically, there were zero jobs. Yet somehow at every level she was able to succeed handsomely. </p>
<p>My kid’s music teacher is an outstanding professional union musician in Boston and plays in the pit for all of the Broadway shows and for the orchestra that plays in the Hatshell on the Esplanade for the 4th of July. He’s extremely down to earth. Statistically, there was no chance of him getting that kind of gig, so how did he know it was worth pursuing? I know parents who are in horror because their kid wants to be a musician. </p>
<p>There is a guy who posts on the CC board for science majors who tells everyone how useless it is to major in science. Statistically he’s right. But is he? Aren’t kids who post on CC statistically more likely to care enough to be successful? I find it to be such a self-defeating message. </p>
<p>The message I get from that speech is
“YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. YOU ARE ALL THE STATISTICAL MEAN AND YOU SHOULDN’T TRY ANYTHING REALLY DIFFICULT BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL AT IT”. </p>
<p>That’s exactly the wrong message for our nation. What the kids need to hear is that you are all special. Look for something to succeed in. Take calculated risks. Create what wasn’t there before. Dare to be great. Many of you will fail. Most people who succeed have previously failed many times and people who are afraid to fail can never succeed. Want it!</p>
<p>The high performing high school has many different kinds of kids from those who really are special, to those who have been beaten to a pulp and suffer depression because no matter how hard they try it’s never good enough - yet in a broader community they would be considered stars - to those whose parents spent every nickel to live in that community just to go to that school and the kids have to work in their parents business and can’t do ECs. </p>
<p>I can’t stand it when people blindly dislike kids from wealth or kids who are smart or kids who have what they don’t. All of these kids are individuals and feel pressure and have set standards for themselves. </p>
<p>Well said, crankyoldman and classicrockerdad. Your posts had more useful and poignant points than his speech.</p>
<p>The only time I appreciate a speaker being condescending and disrespectful to his audience is when I’m in a comedy club. And we’re not sitting up front.</p>
<p>Anyone think it is amusing that reporting articles feel the need to remind us of the accomplishments of the speakers father in case we don’t recognize the name?
;)</p>
<p>Interesting article on the connection between praise and achievement. It is a little old, but I don’t think the findings have been refuted. It goes against every instinct we as parents and educators seem to have about telling our kids they are “special”. </p>
<p>The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids How Not to Talk to Your Kids, The Inverse Power of Praise – New York Magazine Feb. 11, 2007</p>
<p>tidbits from the article: Having high self esteem doesn’t improve grades or career achievement. It doesn’t reduce alcoholism. And it especially doesn’t lower violence of any kind. To be effective, praise needs to be specific, and based on a real thing such as a particular skill or talent or accomplishment. “Great game” is ineffective, while “your pass to Alicia was excellent” is effective praise. Overly praised students become risk averse, exhibit shorter task persistence, are less self confident, and are more likely to seek gain by tearing down the accomplishments of others.</p>
<p>“When students transition to junior high, some who had done well in elementary school inevitably struggle in the larger and more demanding environment. Those who equate their earlier success to their innate ability surmise they’ve been dumb all along. Their grades never recover because because the likely key to their recovery - increasing effort - they view as just further proof of their failure.”</p>
<p>A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not develop the ability to persist through failures because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.</p>
<p>“Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. We put our children in high pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments.”</p>
<p>Perhaps Mr. McCoullough’s speech was doing more to motivate the graduates to succeed than the usual “You are all Special” speech.</p>
<p>Maybe I missed it, but I am not familiar with any research that suggests blanket insults are an effective motivational tool-especially when those being insulted-new HS graduates-consider the source of this “motivation”-a HS English teacher working in a comfortable environment. And I’m not suggesting mindless praise is effective or warranted-although most of what he’s criticizing is GRADE SCHOOL related stuff. This speech holds no merit on any level; it’s the speaker’s way of letting the graduates know that the speaker is more important than they are, as the speech is about him, not about the students. He’s annoyed, and they are the source of the annoyance. There is nothing insightful or reflective; for a group of 18 year olds being sent into the world, it is remarkably, and lamentably, devoid of any real recognition of the obstacles these kids will face. In fact, the signature line of the speech “…you’re not special. Because everyone is” is utter nonesense-really, it makes no sense at all. Enough. If he wanted to deliver this speech, he should have asked for time at the first freshman assembly; maybe then it would have been relevant. Knowing the problems these kids have to face now that they’re in the real world it smacks more of exhibitionism than insight.</p>
<p>I didn’t get a sense that Mr. McCoullough was annoyed, or felt self important, or that his speech was a blanket insult to all students, everywhere. </p>
<p>His actual audience of parents and students were overwhelmingly positive in their responses to the speech, which is all that matters.</p>
<p>Emeraldkitty: That is irony
Grumpyoldman and Classicrock: Interesting points you both made.</p>
<p>In the context of this speech I think “not special” is equivilent to “not entitled” to expect that the world will bestow on them gifts that are yet to be earned. In the case of our young military I would hope that the decision to serve, put themselves in harm’s way and make the ultimate sacrifice would qualify for honor earned. I also don’t think that saying these students aren’t special is the same as saying that they accomplished nothing in high school. I feel safe in assuming that students who have achieved a level of excellence in any number of ways in this HS have been honored for their achievements. Contrary to the message “don’t try anything difficult” I think the words at the end said go out and be passionate about doing what moves you to make the world a better place. Rather than worry about being called special and acquiring accolades follow your passion and contribute. This may result in accolades but these are not a necessary criteria for a life well lived. I think it frees students to follow what is important to them rather than worry about trophies.</p>
<p>I would definitely hope that as an English teacher the speaker was not unresponsive to the achievements of his students. I expect that if he was an unresponsive, uncaring insulting teacher that he would not have been selected to give the commencement address. Again this speech might not have worked everywhere but as a teacher at this school he very likely has insight into the big picture at that particular school and an understanding about how to move his students. That is probably the reason he was chosen to make this address.</p>
<p>I know we all perceive things differently. This is just my take. There are any number of motivating things that can be said in a commencement address. Lots of other things would probably have been less contriversial and also wonderful but apparently the speech was enjoyed by and resonated with the audience for whom it was intended.</p>
<p>The bulk of the media and internet chatter has been “overwhelming positive” too. That is not “all that matters”. That’s a matter of form; what matters is the substance-and here substance is sorely lacking.</p>
<p><<that’s a="" matter="" of="" form;="" what="" matters="" is="" the="" substance-and="" here="" substance="" sorely="" lacking.="">> And how do you classify what is good substance and bad substance? There were people celebrating the 9/11 incident (civilians, innocent) with speeches. Are those good substances? No, because we live in America. And they are supposed to be evil. But to them it is good substance.</that’s></p>