High school teacher tells graduating students: you’re not special | Hacker News Reader

High school teacher tells graduating students: you’re not special

nydailynews.com

109 pointsstfu85 comments

It sounds like this was a good speech. I expect few people here will disagree.

I'd like to remark, though, on the fact that the author called this "controversial advice," while going on to describe not a controversy, but instead "overwhelmingly positive" reaction.

Recently I've been trying to think about stories like these. Stories where someone speaks the truth that society doesn't want to hear, and people rally around the truth teller. I try to ask myself who's in this willfully deaf society if everyone I see supports the truth.

And in this case, I suspect we're still seeing some inertia from the self-esteem movement to which the speaker alludes. But is there a deep controversy? Is David McCullough a brave whistleblower speaking against a near-unanimous wrong? Or is the New York Daily News making a big deal out of someone saying what we all already know?

I think it is very prevalent in the k-12 school system. The everyone-gets-a-medal culture has an odd symbiotic relationship with the zero-tolerence mantra practiced at that level.

Self-esteem culture is like nuclear armament. Everybody complains about it but nobody wants to do anything about it individually; why would you want to be the one to break the little kids' hearts by denying 'em a medal even though they tried really hard and just happen to suck.

Alternatively, self-esteem culture is like "morons who can't drive". Everybody complains about it, but the people who actually cause the problem lack the self-awareness to see that they are the problem even when they're complaining about it.

Probably a little bit of both.

Actually, the morons who can't drive problem is easily rectified by raising the bar on getting a driver's licence. In Deutschland, where getting licences is a rigorous process, the problem is largely absent. Similar to awards and A's, driving has come to be seen as a right and not a privilege.

Drivers also appreciate driving more in Deutschland. They drive for driving's sake, while in the US, driving is just another waste of time, and people eat, apply makeup, make phone calls or text, etc. while they are driving.

Even if the US has the world's largest network of highways, you won't see anything like the Autobahn in a nation full of distracted drivers.

I think this is just a problem with larger metro areas.

Normally, at least once a week, I spend several hours on the road, because I enjoy driving. Sure I'm often going somewhere, but while I'm driving I'm sucking in the beautiful countryside, and will often take scenic routes because I enjoy taking it in. The first thing you have to do is get away from society and get off the highways.

Well and good, but let's not pretend it's new or the fault of the boomers. (Yes, like me.)

I find in a letter of Evelyn Waugh's dated 12 April 1949,

"My daughter Teresa (age 11) has come back from school with a glowing report by her French mistress 2nd in class with 82% marks. I asked her to name in French any six objects in the dining-room. After distressed thought she got five, four of them with wrong genders. I know of another girl who came back from another school with a special medal for swimming--a thing like the Garter with a great sash. Her parents put her in the pool and she sank like a stone."

Cliche boomer, blaming the generation before them. /joking

Just because it was a problem then doesnt mean you[r generation] didnt cause he current problem ;0)

Seriously though, these sorts of societal characteristics seem to be somewhat cyclical as generations respond to the actions of their parents. Like clothing fashions, maybe?

You may be right... but might it also be the case that the people who are doing something about it just aren't making a big deal about it?

I suspect many people in their 20s and early 30s can think of a time when they were rewarded just for showing up. One year of little league was like that for me. Some of my non-core (or non-STEM, in modern parlance) classes felt like that, though I tended to participate actively in those. Put a lot of stories like that together and it's easy to say that the self-esteem culture affects everyone, and a small step from there to say it affects everything.

But that doesn't take into account my other four years of little league. Or my many music auditions. Or the difficult years when I decided I didn't want to do homework. (I assure you my grades suffered those years.) No one involved in those things was making a political statement; they were simply allowing the natural consequences of my actions to work.

Obviously everyone has different experiences. But I suspect a lot of people would be able to recall fewer cases in their lives where mere participation was rewarded than those where natural consequences were quietly present.

There's a difference between making a kid feel capable as anyone else and making them feel they're special. The latter leads to narcissism.

Making a kid feel as capable as everyone else is forcing them to lie to themselves. How is that a good thing?

So is instilling self-limiting beliefs.

It sounds like you're trying to make a point but I can't tell from your comment what it is?

Watch this video of Žižek talking about the "unknown knowns" of ideology to understand why this is such a big deal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0

The speech is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfxYhtf8o4

I wanted to add a perspective from someone who comes from a European country (Portugal) and have been living in the California for the past 4 and half years. Forgive me for the generalizations but one thing that I admire about Americans (at least Californians) is the strong positive "can-do" attitude to life. A fire that gets people to start their own businesses and think of new opportunities. It is obviously hard to pint-point the origin of any cultural trait but I believe that it also stems from the positive re-enforcement that this article is talking about. Along with most people of my generation that I know of, I was brought up with exactly the sort of message that this teacher is conveying ("you're not special"). I really think this contributes to the fact that Portuguese are one of the most risk averse people in the world. Even when we start our own businesses we pick very safe jobs (http://mvalente.eu/2011/03/08/the-paradox-of-portuguese-entr...)

I realize that it might be exaggerated positive re-enforcement in the US and that this can have very serious negative consequences. Learning to fail and balancing your future expectations is a requirement for good mental health. Just keep in mind that there are certainly good things about this attitude.

The positive encouragement model of raising/educating children is a relatively new thing in the US, so I don't think it has much to do with the "can-do" mentality. I'm in my mid-30s and we certainly didn't have it in school when I was growing up. I can remember my brother getting held back a grade.

If anything, I think its the current model that threatens the "can-do" attitude of the US, since I think a lot of the "can-do" attitude is really resilience. It an attitude that says "this won't be easy and I might fail, but I can always get up and try again".

If kids gets nothing but positive reinforcement, those initial failures are going to be particularly painful and discouraging. I think parents can teach their children so much by letting them fail (within boundaries) and giving them not self-confidence that they can do anything, but the self-confidence that they can handle any hardship. That's an important difference.

Before I start getting downvoted, I just want to say I haven't start yelling at kids to "get off my lawn!!" yet. :P

Americans had more positive encouragement at school 30 years ago than most other countries.

You can cultivate a positive "can-do" attitude without going overboard with positive reinforcement. A can-do attitude is easy to have if you are actually ready for anything.

I have a 6 year old son, who recently finished a language class (Hindi) and a chess class. In both of these, he got a medal. Why? Because everyone got a medal.

So, in end, he is happy, with a sense of achievement, but what achievement I don't know.

I believe that failure in life is important, at least was for me, otherwise I would never have tried harder. But if people are given something for nothing, how do you define/measure success.

Failure has another great importance, it tells you what your good at and sets you up to try new things or ways. I love golf, but I know that no matter how much time I put into it, I won't be great. Its still a fun thing to do, but I know not to make a career of it.

I failed a lot at programming at the start, but I had enough real successes to keep going. You need the honest feedback to make real decisions. This "everyone gets a medal" culture doesn't give the right feedback so people grow up and have disappointing lives until the can change or die.

Failure also produces a lot of false negatives though, I've failed at a lot of things not because I was bad at them (though, lord knows I have enough failures because of that), but because of bad luck, or bad instruction, or what have you.

Failure is a better signal than success though. You can also succeed through luck and other mostly irrelevant circumstances; but if you are trying to succeed, then you only fail despite your efforts.

Both cases still require examination of the situation to determine whether the success/failure is attributable to luck, skill, effort, etc.

But, most people can feel that. I knew I was going to do fine at programming despite the shaky start. It felt good and I was doing little things right.

The problem is the distortion of your judgement from people who believe no one should fail (or excel really). It makes you not trust your own gut reaction.

Most of the people I've seen who were shielded from failure don't make this distinction. They attribute it to bad luck and don't learn anything or assume they're innately terrible and never try again.

There's a fine line between teaching children to learn from failure and allowing failure to discourage them inappropriately. The solution is to walk it carefully, not stay so far away from it that people never learn to persevere.

Thanks for making this point, amongst many posts looking down upon so-called "self-esteem" culture.

I can't say if the methods being used today to give kids "self-esteem" are misguided and/or ineffective. But I can say that the entire point of true "self-esteem" is exactly so that failure is perceived as a learning experience and not a discouragement. Genuine self-esteem needs to be the backdrop, regardless of whether or not "medals and rewards for everyone" are entirely the wrong way to achieve that.

Edit: I think what I'm trying to say is that there's a difference between self-esteem and self-entitlement.

Funny, I was going to throw some concurring examples from sports your way. "Michael Jorden was cut from his high school basketball team." "Yogi Berra was repeatedly denied a spot on a major league team." But in looking for citations, I seem to have disproven myself. Turns out, Jorden was never cut, he just didn't make varsity as a sophomore, like almost all sophomores, at least partly because, at 15, he was still under 6 feet tall. [1]

As for Berra, the only reference I found was a claim on wikipedia that he was kept off the Cardinals by a team president who was moving to the Dodgers and was hoping to sign Berra there. [2]

These examples certainly don't mean that there are no false negatives when it comes to failure, but I think it's interesting that these two famous stories about great players overcoming early adversity are bunk. It is probably the case that most people start out not being so good at something, then gradually get better, with any early success compounding over time.

[1] http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/11/the-man-wh...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra

A medal seems silly, but here in this part of the US it's common to see 5th grade and 8th grade graduation ceremonies, complete with parties, fancy dresses, and gifts, for the near 100% of kids who met the minimum requirements of the lower levels of their compulsory age-based schooling.

It seems like it's even more common among people who have the least to celebrate: middle-to-upper-middle-class suburban White parents, where your kids practically can't fail school even if they try.

Do any students fail public school grades anymore? Do students get 'held back'?

Back in the 70s, I knew students who were 'held back' - repeated 4th grade again, etc. I don't think I've heard of that since then. Obviously I'm no longer a 4th grader :) but among people I know with kids, the concept of "held back" never comes up.

No.

Even if you deserve to be 'held back', you get what's called a 'social promotion'.

In 8th grade, there was this big project we (each student) had to do in order to 'pass' 8th grade. The teachers all told us that if we didn't do it, we'd fail 8th grade, but still go on to high school as a 'social promotion'.

I actually had several friends who decided to not do that project, because nothing bad would happen to them if they didn't do it.

Those social promotions are clearly screwed up, especially as old as eighth grade. As a counterpoint anecdote, however, my mother is a kindergarten teacher who holds back (on average) two students a year for failure to understand the material or social immaturity that would prevent them from learning anything in first grade. And this is in a state (Indiana) in which kindergarten is voluntary.

Never heard of that but I don't doubt you.

In the (public) school my son goes to, people do get held back.

As someone who went through school in the 1990s-2000s, I heard of kids either in my grade or my sister's grade (younger) that had to repeat a year. I'm not sure if that's changed since, or if it was location-specific.

I graduated in 2007. While it wasn't common, there were friends of mine held back in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grade.

Yes.

Although it sometimes takes less clear-cut forms than "you fail this course, therefore we make you repeat the entire grade." my mother, for instance, taught at a school (this was ~2000-2006) that kept students perpetually in 8th grade. The school system identified students who were likely to drop out of high school based on grades and behavior and kept them from entering high school to prevent them from depressing high school dropout rates. They would remain in 8th grade until they turned 16 and dropped out.

I was in high school in the 90's, and my classmates frequently failed and had to repeat classes. This usually didn't result in having to repeat an entire grade though, since our schedules were very personalized and classes could be repeated the next year or semester without interfering with the rest of the schedule.

This was a conversation I was having the other with a close friend from France. I was talking about how kids in the US, especially in impoverished areas, get pushed through math classes with barely passing marks even if they learned nothing. I'm not sure how completely accurate this is, but he explained that he knew many people (probably 15-20) that had repeat entire grades multiple times because they failed math.

I know that a lot more has to happen in the US in regards to financial reform of public education for kids to be able to repeat grades so liberally, but I think it would do a lot of good.

I have friends with kids who have been held back, but these are usually kids who have some form of diagnosable developmental delay, not just an average kid not doing well.

I remember kids being held back, mostly in the early k-1-2 years or 11-12th grade years. Not much in between. I was in school in the 90s and early 00s.

Thank you, that reminds me of another pet peeve of mine regarding the education system in US:

In India, where I'm originally from, even high-school was not given much importance, primary objective was getting into a good college. People dropped out for economic reasons and not other.

Here in the US by celebrating something as simple as "graduating" 5th-6th grade, we're telling these kids that they have achieved something, when they clearly have not, and then we mourn the fact that many kids dropout even before high-school.

I doubt that those early grade parties have much impact any which way.

I think they are the sort of thing that makes a certain type of parent or teacher feel good, so they end up happening when those people decide to make them happen. The kids get some cake and forget about it a week later (or maybe 2 weeks into the stress of starting at a new school).

As far as I know, the message that graduating high school is important gets hammered on over and over (and then it isn't particularly important, a GED works about as well anywhere a diploma is supposed to matter).

A high school diploma in a developed country doesn't get you that far these days.

Don't think of graduation as an achievement. Instead, think of it as a coming-of-age celebration, like a mitzvah. From that perspective, it doesn't seem so bad.

You mean a Bar Mitzvah. A "mitzvah" is simply a commandment; the Bar Mitzvah is but one of these.

And from experience, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah is certainly an achievement, not merely a coming of age ceremony. It was certainly the hardest thing I'd done by that age (13), and involves leading a full service in hebrew and reading from the Torah, also in (very antiquated) hebrew.

Preparing for it involved tutoring for six months, in addition to biweekly hebrew and temple school classes for many years.

That is because graduating from 5th and 8th grade once was an achievement, and in the scheme of human history, is remarkable. What most 5th and 8th graders have learned by the time they "graduate" would have once been more education than kings and philosophers received over the courses of their lifetimes. To put things into perspective: your average 8th grader has received more education than Newton had when he began developing calculus (though obviously, the 8th grader's education is more spread out and generalized).

It was only in the last century (post WWI) that graduating from high school became commonplace. It was not until after the GI Bill (post-WWII) that attending college became common. It was not until after Vietnam that attending college became the new normal.

I don't even think it should be assumed that if no medal was given out then the child is a failure. I remember getting participation trophies as a young child (under 10) and at the time I was confused as to why I was getting it. Had they not given out the trophy I would have thought nothing of it. Just that the activity is over. No sense of failure (or success for that matter), just the general passage of time.

In 3rd grade, my teacher would give us star stickers that reflected how well we did in the class with participation, attendance, behavior, etc. I have a picture of me at my desk with these stars and in the picture there is another student with their stars showing. I had about 5x the amount of stars.

The student behind me ended up earning a PhD in her education while I have a BS.

Oh, HN, so grumpy.

What no one here has mentioned yet is that for most people, after you get out of school, you won't be winning first place and yet you will be rewarded (with a paycheck) for just showing up and doing a fairly average job.

The other comments with walking a fine line with this are spot on. How quickly we forget another piece of favorite HN repostery: praise kids for effort, not for being smart (or some other supposedly intrinsic quality). Yes, the kid that shows up, sticks his finger up his nose and receives a participation prize has learned little, but the kid that showed up, worked really hard, and totally failed might still get something out of it.

I totally agree with you, although getting a "fairly average job" is easier said that done for those who aren't at least somewhat exceptional.

If it really is an average job then it can't only be taking exceptional people.

You either need to redefine what you think an average job is, or redefine what you think an exceptional person is.

But they will be in for a surprise when get to that first job interview and don't get the job just for showing up. Getting a job is the real prize. And they usually don't hand those out just for showing up.

This especially hits home with me, since I've gotten trophies and awards for pretty much anything I've ever done (including in college). Until I hit the 'real world' and realized that even though I was talented and had a lot going for me, it didn't matter: there are a million people in the same boat.

My most recent realization, though, is that most people my age don't want to work too hard. We are used to getting the accolades with the default level of effort, so why bother?

I'm special though, I work hard. Seriously I'm special. TELL ME I'M SPECIAL.

You're special, just like everyone else :)

You sit beautifully at the peak of the bell curve :)

> My most recent realization, though, is that most people my age don't want to work too hard.

You can probably leave out "my age" and it will still be fairly accurate.

Of course you are special, why would you be any different?

You're special in that you're unique; you're not special in that you innately have talents that nobody else does.

man, where did you guys go to high school? it was, by far, the most difficult and unpleasant thing I've ever experienced. People were harder on me in high school than they ever have been in the what, 14 years after? I had to work far harder than ever after, and the rewards were nearly non-existent, compared to having a "real job"

I mean, I've heard about these stories, but really? high school is miserable. You get shat upon by nearly everyone, and nobody has any sympathy. Add to that the usual confusion of puberty and of trying to develop your own framework of morals and life philosophy, and it's rough.

But yeah... from what I remember? this idea that "you are not special" or, at least, "you are not special in the good way" was pounded into you, all day, every day.

I'm having a hard time believing things changed that dramatically in the last 14 years. I suspect the difference was that I went to one of the worst schools in the state, while many of these complaints are about good schools in good areas; the schools people fight to get their kids into.

I have a tendency to agree with you. But I'd go one step further and say that in college, at least from a classroom standpoint, teachers were the hardest on you, and the least likely to give a crap about you. It was up to you to go home and understand the material, no time for pampering or pats on the back there.

Overall I think there is some truth in is message, but the answer to one extreme is not another extreme...it's no extremes. Everyone is unique and special, just not as unique as our egos like to make us think. We're also all very similar under a broad enough lens.

Honestly, it sounds like the teacher has some underlying issues with himself (and students) that expressed themselves in this speech. He couldn't have seriously thought a 10-minute speech would change a lifetime of behavior.

Unrelated to the content itself, but isn't it annoying how the article is littered with links to other articles?

I had to go back and look at the text carefully to even notice it.

It reminds me of the Starship Troopers movie, actually, and it's incredibly annoying.

Chris Lasch wrote the book on this in 1976

http://www.amazon.com/The-Culture-Narcissism-Diminishing-Exp...

Full text of the speech: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/wellesley/2012/06/youre_...

It's easier to read here:

http://www.theswellesleyreport.com/2012/06/wellesley-high-gr...

(All on one page, no interspersed ads, better formatting.)

The website's bandwidth has been maxed out. Google webcache here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wQU2TYM...

Sorry for the off-topic remark, but I really couldn't believe that this website uses what amounts to ads to separate paragraphs. I was honestly too irritated and distracted to finish reading the article.

Can I do better than 50% of my classroom mates? If yes then I am ok. Can i do better than 90% ? If yes then I am special.

Only if your classmates can do better than 90% of the rest of the developed and emerging world.

THAT is the real question. And, frankly, for the vast majority of Americans... an honest answer to that question sucks to think about.

That would put you in the 1%, right?

I posit that even being in the top 10% is probably fine. The problem is a global economic system that isn't growing with the population and funneling the money to the 1%, as opposed to the 10% (which now just get by), much less 50 or 100% of the humans on the planet.

Better at what? Special to whom?

Even if you got perfect grades on everything you did, how is that special? Perhaps you merely provided the expected answers and work to everything. Being special should involve doing something untested, maybe even scoring badly on the tests in the meantime.

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.

That right there is probably the best summary of all.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

Well, at least high school graduates are not yet decaying since they have yet to reach their prime. After you reach your peak biologically, you are decaying organic matter.

In a way, you pretty much begin dying as soon as you are born. That is not meant to be something morbid. But everybody sheds dead skin everyday.

This topic seems to get re-hashed every few weeks on HN. Sort of getting tired of hearing about it.

At least it's not the exact same story getting re-hashed ten times in a day, which happens fairly often on HN.

I kind of want there to be a fan club for this guy. He rocks.

Everyone is different yet everyone is the same

In a world that makes sense, this wouldn't be a big deal, because (most) graduating high school students really aren't special. We aren't all be a Jobs or a Gates or a Zuckerberg. But in today's society, this is making waves due to reasons the teacher cites in his commencement speech: because Americans have come to appreciate accolades more than genuine achievement.

Being 'special' as an adult doesn't mean you were special in a particular way as a child though does it?

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