You are NOT Special... and other encouragements by David McCullough Jr

In short

This is a book by an American English teacher. He made it because of a graduation speech he made that was filmed, put online and gone viral.

The book is about teenagers in upper middle class schools in US. As a teacher, David McCullogh Jr. have worked for 20+ years and seen generations grow. In the book he writes about the way kids childhoods have changed (worsened) in time. And to do that sistematically, he puts forward topcis, like:

• parents
• self awareness
• school
• college
• sports
• money
• stereotypes
• death

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Parents

Nowadays, parents are more controlling and micro managing as never before.

They know everything you do, make your decisions for you, are overly protective and expect you to be a superkid compared to other superkids. They put you in countless amounts of extra curriculums, so you have no free time, all you do is study hard (with parents help). Parents think their kid is the best, strongest, smartest kid ever been born. And they are ready to prove it.

Parents are the biggest pain in the ass for kids normal growth - they do not let them make their own mistakes and raise kids in a super safety bubble that later on does not help them at all. Love is a good thing, but over-protectiveness truly is not.

Self awareness

Our personalities are made of genes, nurture and friends.

If we don’t engage in trying to understand what We enjoy, what We have fun doing, who We are in childhood, we might get on the wrong track and pursue not ours, but our moms dream. Every kid has its own life and your parents unfulfilled ballet dream is not yours. Live your own life, dream your own dreams!

Tell me who are your friends, and I’ll tell you who you will become.

Your friends infulence you greatly, so be careful who you choose as a friend, because they are going to stay in your life forever. The sad thing is that modern kids don’t make that much real friends, because they see them as competition, not a good company.

They very often make friends because that is useful for them in some way (getting popularity in school, wasting rich kids money, etc). And this is sad, because there is no money that can buy real friends, it’s one of your biggest treasures in life.

School

Personally, I think this has been so for a quite a time, but kids don’t go to school to learn, they go there to get good grades (so their parents would be proud..)

And because of parents who think their kid is the best and expect them to get only A+, teachers are forced to play by their rules and give better grades kids deserve. Result - grades inflate. A solid B 10 years ago now is a A-…

So to keep your parents happy, you calculate which class to attend, which teacher is easier to fool and how can I get through the easiest. And the bunch of extra curriculums does not help - you have to do homework at the dark or right before class. (So is there any time for friends? No!)

College

The upper middle class school kids (and their parents) have just 1 goal - get in a good college. And by good they mean Harvard. All their childhood has been staged for that and that only.

Even though their parents willl be in debt for quite a few years (because a year in any of these schools costs about 50 000 a year or semester), a good college is The Holy Grail for these families. They will do everything to get the kid in. And they believe the College is the answer to all of their problems.

I know it is not. If you have not done your self awareness homework, great college won’t help you - you will be miserable anyway.

Sports

The author is a parent of 5 and one of his children does football very well. They spend enourmous amounts of money and time to get her to football games all around the country with her club team (she has another school team).

And yet this is another part where things have strayed - sports are getting way too much stressful for kids. All of them want to become professional and get in the good colleges because of sports. There is no simple fun in doing them, it’s all for the Big opportunity that might come if you are hard working and talented (as all of them are, of course).

The author remembers that when he was a kid, he just went outside to play hockey with his friends. Equipment did not matter, nor did skill or goal, they did it only for the pure fun. Unfortunately, those times are gone.

Money

I’ve seen this myself, that money rules not only in the grown up world, but also for the teenagers. It is seen that the rich kids are cooler that the poor/normal ones.

It comes by no surprise for me, because in our society money gets more and more important. And school is just a mirror for things happening around.

Stereotypes

Although we are getting better at this, there is so much work to be done to stop racism, homophobia and stereotyping gender roles.

In this chapter David shares his experience when he was a teacher in Hawaii for 10 years. Hawaii is a place where all kinds of races coexist in harmony and there is no difference whether you are Asian, White, Black or Polinesian. You are all in the same boat.

But this is not the case in continental America. Most rich people are white and most poor people are black. And wealth sucks up more wealth and isolates itselft from poverty. So, in schools where rich kids study, there is no diversity, its all rich and white. So, the kids do not get the chance to make friends with other ethncities and become afraid of them (racist).

And the gender roles in high school are even funnier. Girls are better at school - they grow up faster, are more diligent and play by the rules. But at the end, their bosses are those guys of whom they were better. And all because of the stereotypes that guys are better leaders and girls have to stay at home to raise kids. Plus, it would hurt mans ego, if his wife earned more than him, right?

So, at the end, you get supermoms who work at day, spend all of their free time with kids and lazy dads that are the leaders at work they hate.