‘Kids have to stumble, they should fall’

>>> finally here tonight, it's commencement season, and if you were watching friday night you saw our annual best of the commencement send-offs for the class of 2012 . we have put the piece on our website. a collection of all the positive messages for the graduates. fair warning they weren't all positive this year. one commencement speaker at a massachusetts high school delivered a message a few days back that may speak for a whole lot of people. he made news around the planet by telling the students they aren't special and then some. he is a veteran english teacher at wellesley high school and david mccollough junior son of the historian and author. as we found out talking to him about it this weekend his message to the kids he loves was about a lot more.

>> each of you is dressed you will notice exactly the same. and your diploma, but for your name, exactly the same. all of this iss it should be because none ofou is special.

>> i wanted to give these kids whom i know well and care very much about something useful. you are not special. you're not exceptional. contrary to what your u-9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card despite every assurance of a corps atlanta purple dinosaur that nice mr. rodgers and your batty aunt sylvia, no matter how often your paternal caped crusader has swooped tine save you you are nothing special.

>> i perhaps naively had no idea that the entire electronic world was eavesdropping.

>> if everyone gets a trophy trophies become meaningless. we have of tely, americans to our detriment come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.

>> kids have to stumble they should fall. they learn how to get up that way. kids are so pressured to succeed they will do everything to not to fail. it's not the success, they want to avoid failure.

>> exercise free will , and independent thought not for satisfactions they will bring you but for the good will they dupe others the $6.8 billion and ose who will follow them. and you too will discove the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. the sweetest joys of life then come only with the recognition that you are not special, because, everyone is.

>> our thanks to david m mccollough junior. if you want to see his speech and conversation with us they're both on our website as of