A controversial high school graduation commencement speech by David McCullough Jr. went viral because his central, provocative message was, “You are not special.”
McCullough said to hundreds of hopeful, high school graduates:
“You are not special. You are not exceptional. Contrary to what your [under-nine] 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.”
Let’s define “special.” According to Webster’s Dictionary:
Spe-cial adjective
1. of a distinct or particular kind or character: a special kind of key.
2. being a particular one; particular, individual, or certain: You’d better call the special number.
3. pertaining or peculiar to a particular person, thing, instance, etc.; distinctive; unique: the special features of a plan.
4. having a specific or particular function, purpose, etc.: a special messenger.
5. distinguished or different from what is ordinary or usual: a special occasion; to fix something special.
From these definitions, you can understand why some people took offense to his message.
I, for one, believe we all possess a distinct set of characteristics that sets us a part from one another. I don’t think many will deny the fact that we’re all individuals possessing unique qualities that render us valueable. Many a teacher, preacher and daytime talk show host has told us as much.
If you go on to watch the entire speech you will come to understand that McCullough didn’t technically, literally mean “special.” What McCullough really meant was, you are not entitled. But saying “you are not entitled” to a bunch of high school seniors may only cause a snicker of collusion among the parents. Saying ”you are not SPECIAL,” will raise eyebrows and get you into Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and a defense from the Christian Science Monitor among many, many others.
I saw it at least three times in my Facebook and Twitter streams.
Let’s put his speech into context, shall we? McCullough was speaking to roughly 300 of the most privileged high school graduates on the planet. These students were graduating from what US News ranks the #260 best high school in the nation. Eighty-seven percent of the school’s population is white and only 4% qualify as economically disadvantaged.
So yeah, a few of them might benefit from being told bluntly that they “are not special.”
His message spread far and wide over the interwebs because entitlement is a hot-button political issue by way of moral belief. If I’m honest, I can’t say that I disagree with that sentiment. I believe that people shouldn’t feel entitled to things they haven’t worked to earn. I’m a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of gal.
But I also believe we are all important and uniquely valuable and I’d much rather remind people of their absolute specialness, rather than their ultimate insignificance. Everyday life does a pretty good job of that already.
McCullough goes on to reference a contemporary society that covets being famous for nothing, that measures their worth in Twitter followers and self-satisfaction. All things I mostly agree with.
In fact, I completely agree with his second to last statement:
“And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.”
But it is McCullough’s last sentence that makes me reticent to endorse his entire message. I can’t decide if he wrote it just to tie it all up with a convenient bow and circle back to the most provocative statement, or if he really meant this?
“The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.”
Because I flatly disagree with this statement in this form. From my own experience, my sweetest joys in life did not come at the realization that I am not special, but rather from the realization that I am more special than I ever knew–that in the vast, grand scheme of things my life matters if for no other reason that I was born.
When McCullough says that being in service of others, what he terms “selflessness” is the greatest thing you can do for yourself, as I said, I whole-heartedly agree. But my last statement would have been that it is BECAUSE of this ‘service to others’ that you find the nature of your true specialness and by doing so, come to understand the absolute specialness of everyone else… and maybe (hopefully) that is what David McCullough meant.
That one of life’s sweetest joys comes from the recognition that we are all One. That because we are all connected to each other on this planet, as members of the human race, we are simultaneously all special and not special at all, unique and also, completely the same.
If that’s what he meant… well then, I couldn’t agree more.
Shannon: I saw this speech as well, although I can’t be sure I took the time to watch it all the way through, here are my thoughts:
I felt Mr. McCullough’s message was an attempt to remind these graduates that while they’ve been told all of their lives (by way of $10 trophys, a private school education, Barney, and well-meaning relatives who feel compelled by our society to praise every baby step made) they are not “special”. He was letting them know they should not feel, contrary to popular belief, entitled to every/anything in life and the real joy in living comes from sharing your (God) given gifts with others.
In my opinion it is a real problem with today’s youth (that is, feeling entitled). In our home we strive to love our children unconditionally, while setting firm boundaries and consequences. By instilling in them a strong work ethic (both academically and with physical activity and, when age-appropriate, a job) they come to understand the world is much larger than themself. Unfortunately I have to say we feel fairly alone in that endeavor (at least in the area we live in).
So for me McCullough blurred the line between special and entitled, as you suggest. Each of us is born with unique personalities, abilities and purpose which definitely qualifies us as “special”.
I, too, agree with his overall message, but my essay was an attempt to understand why people took offense to it, as well as why it went viral and was featured in so many places. As I see it, he meant “entitled.”
He is a high school teacher at a top-ranking high school in an affluent area. I’m sure he knows all-to-well the narcissistic, entitled teenager.
But there’s a flip-side to the “I’m not special” message and that is what he got to, in my opinion, in the end. A message that was looked over to focus on the more provocative angle. That message was that we are ALL special, and it is in the service of others that we find our true specialness.
I agree with that whole-heartedly.
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That’s how I see it too, that by “special”, he meant “entitled”. And even when I realised that, I was a bit fidgety about listening to this speech, because I thought it was going to be a rant on “how things were in my day”. But I did listen to it and he wasn’t ranting and raving, saying “you expect this and you expect that but here’s the reality!” and I’m glad about that. Sadly, there is a problem with a culture of entitlement but even so, I’m no fan of anyone who assumes that every single graduate must be part of that culture. I don’t deny that there are graduates like that, I flatly deny that all are.
And everyone is special. Everyone. There is no single set of criteria for “special”, you can be special for many different reasons, special in different ways to different people. Me, I don’t have a vastly superior intellect or stunning beauty, I got average grades. I have a degree in English, a 2:1. A perfectly respectable grade but not the highest. I’m not about to fix the hole in the ozone layer or discover a cure for cancer. But I’m special, to myself and to others. I remember an old lady who came into the shop where I used to work and she always said to me “I like to come to your checkout to see your smile”. She always told me that whenever she saw me and she was very special to me. Presumably I was special to her too, just because of ,my smile. “Special” isn’t always something big and impressive.
And I definitely agree that “special” shouldn’t be the end goal, just a by-product. I love the lines about climbing the mountain to see the world, not so the world can see you and about learning for the joy of learning. The way I’m reading the speech is that he’s saying that no-one has any right to special, any right to anything. That “special” can be achieved – and he’s definitely encouraging those graduates to chase their dreams for all they’re worth – but only with hard work and once they know what “special” actually is to them.
Personally, I think those graduates will look back on this speech and say to themselves “You know something? He was absolutely right.” Me, I look back on my graduation speaker and wonder what planet they shipped him in from. He was either a pathological liar or delusional – possibly both – because to hear him tell it, there was no shortage of graduate jobs, everything was rosy, we were all spectacular and none of us would encounter any problems.
Not remotely useful and very patronising indeed.
I agree with everything you have said. I think we are all special, and yet none of us are entitled.
There are way too many children today who feel entitled. Things come so easily to them and we, as parents, try so hard to make sure that they have everything they need and that they never have to do “without.” In some ways, we are doing them a disservice, because they lack the understanding of the value of hard work and the importance, sometimes, of working ones way up the ladder. They expect to start at the top, and that’s not how the real world works.