Your'e Not That Special
Without Prejudice
This is for the next generation of Upstarts that think they can teach their Granny "How To Suck Eggs"
It's a speech by an English Teacher who is farewelling A Graduate Class of 2012.
"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, counselled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again," Mr McCullough said.
"But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not."
The English teacher illustrated his point mathematically.
"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," he said.
The son of Pulitzer prize-winning historian David McCullough told the graduates and their parents that around 3.2 million other students would be graduating from over 37,000 US high schools that year.
"That's 37,000 valedictorians. 37,000 class presidents. 92,000 harmonising altos. 340,000 swaggering jocks".
The teacher warned that gestures have taken precedence over deeds and that today people sought to accomplish thing for the recognition rather than the pursuit of a goal.
"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.
Despite his unusual approach the speech was welcomed by students and parents alike who said they appreciated being told "what we need to hear and not necessarily what we wanted to hear," local newspaper The Swellesley Report commented.
Mr McCullough told FOX News in an interview that parents are often overly protective of their children and this doesn't help them learn to deal with a tough and competitive world.
"So many of the adults around them — the behaviour 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," he said.
"To send them off into the world with an inflated sense of importance is wrong
It's a speech by an English Teacher who is farewelling A Graduate Class of 2012.
"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, counselled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again," Mr McCullough said.
"But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not."
The English teacher illustrated his point mathematically.
"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," he said.
The son of Pulitzer prize-winning historian David McCullough told the graduates and their parents that around 3.2 million other students would be graduating from over 37,000 US high schools that year.
"That's 37,000 valedictorians. 37,000 class presidents. 92,000 harmonising altos. 340,000 swaggering jocks".
The teacher warned that gestures have taken precedence over deeds and that today people sought to accomplish thing for the recognition rather than the pursuit of a goal.
"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.
Despite his unusual approach the speech was welcomed by students and parents alike who said they appreciated being told "what we need to hear and not necessarily what we wanted to hear," local newspaper The Swellesley Report commented.
Mr McCullough told FOX News in an interview that parents are often overly protective of their children and this doesn't help them learn to deal with a tough and competitive world.
"So many of the adults around them — the behaviour 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," he said.
"To send them off into the world with an inflated sense of importance is wrong
