Debbie Downer Teacher or Brilliant Speech

[Minotaur]

This is the title of the article about the teacher who pulled the rug out from under the happy graduates. You'll have to read every last word of the article to draw a fair conclusion but this is very interesting. Are students ready for tough love in the form of reality even with a unhappy/happy ending? I personally think so but I listened to every last word. Brilliant!

'You are not special,' English teacher tells graduating Massachusetts students"

"One English teacher had a message for this year's graduates of Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Mass.: They aren’t special.

In addition to exhorting the Class of 2012 to pursue distinctive lives, Wellesley High School English teacher David McCullough delivered some sobering words: “None of you is special. You are not special. You are not exceptional.”

The educator called the graduating students “pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble wrapped... nudged, cajoled ... feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.”

“Contrary to what your U9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you … you’re nothing special,” he said in his speech, published in the Boston Herald."

Read the entire article or listen to the video here:

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...tells-graduating-massachusetts-students?lite&

 

[Friday13]

Every high school should have a teacher like that! Welcome to the real world kids.

 

[Jen]

A little of both.
Kids need to figure out that they aren't as "special" as those who love them have led them to believe they are. And they will figure that out soon enough. I am not certain that a graduation speech is the best place to give them the bad news.............some events are better for doing the uplifting of spirits and a graduation is, in my opinion, one of those places.

But I have read this sort of graduation speech before and some speech givers think that graduation is the time and place for the introduction to the cold cruel world.

The up side is that all of the graduating seniors have probably forgotten everything uttered by that speech giver (if they were even listening in the first place). My daughters Associates Degree speaker spouted crapola. I mean blithering stupid crapola. But --- I don't even remember what her name was or what the crapola was about...........just that it was unadulterated crap. My daughter remembers that she said .........find something to believe in.......Anything is fine..... Space ships, extraterrestrials........... little green men.......... if you believe it, it's good. P.U.

So really. No problem.

 

[Minotaur]

I watched the kids in the back of him and they went from distracted to full attention and appeared to appreciate it. Kids are smarter than we think. He is an exceptional teacher if he brings that beautiful mind in his classroom.