That statement is another in a long line of jeremiads about
the “problem” of teaching each child that he or she is special – the same kind
of jeremiad expressed in another
piece that made its way around Facebook recently, which suggests that the
source of unhappiness for folks in Generation Y (a.k.a., the Millennial generation,
consisting of folks born from around 1980 to the mid-1990s) is that they’ve all
been told they’re special growing up, only to grow up and find out that they’re
not. Indeed, part of the author’s advice
for finding happiness juxtaposes the “You’re not special” sentiment with the
same value of hard work expressed in the piece I reference above. The author states, “Stop thinking that you're
special. The fact is, right now, you're
not special. You're another completely
inexperienced young person who doesn't have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard
for a long time.”
I guess to an extent I understand this sentiment, but I also
think the sentiment and the corresponding advice are misguided. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with
telling folks that everyone is special and, as a component of that, telling
each individual that he or she is special.
Indeed, democracy itself relies on acknowledging the particular
contributions that each person can offer, valuing each of those contributions
and providing both for the expression of those contributions and for the process
of listening to those contributions. In
this regard, I rest on the fifth word of the definition of the word “special”
that the second piece offers: “better,
greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.” Each of us is different from one another,
based on differences in cultural backgrounds, personal experiences, and more. A working democracy recognizes those
differences, calling upon each of us both to contribute our own perspectives
and what we have to offer and to recognize the contributions of others.
So, I don’t think telling people they’re not special is the
answer. To do so suggests that folks don’t
have contributions to offer.
Furthermore, when combined with the sentiment that one needs to work
hard to make oneself special or to prove that one is special, it becomes a
way of reinforcing the unearned privileges of those whose positions the
structure of society has advantaged.
Indeed, this correlates with the kinds of sentiments that people of
color, women, working-class individuals, the differently abled, and so on have
had to deal with historically, wherein they have been told they just aren’t working
hard enough to earn consideration,
while white folks, men, the rich, those whose abilities serve as the basis for
the structure of society, and so on have faced less laborious paths to the kind
of “special” status that provides a basis for consideration of their
contributions. Indeed, this is why multiculturalism
is so important in connection with democracy.
It asks us not only to allow, but to celebrate the diversity of
cultures, peoples, and perspectives that all might contribute to the governance
and richness of society.
I think the answer, rather, is that while we’ve found ways
to tell people they’re special, we have not done a good job of including the other
side of the “Everyone is special” message—namely, that everyone else is
special, too. In other words, each of us
should be told that we are special because we are—we each have something to
contribute, and we should contribute it—but in doing so, we must also take care
to remember to accept, consider, and celebrate the contributions of each of our
fellow members of society. And, in doing
so, we must seek to understand, empathize, and respect others even as we do
that for ourselves. It’s the kind of
thing that many colleagues and I teach about in communication courses: For as much as expression is a fundamental
part of communication, listening remains half of the process as well, and to be
good communicators (and, by extension, I would suggest good citizens) we must
work not only on expressing ourselves well, but also on listening well to
others.
Yet, in a society such as the United States, we have the
economic imperatives of a capitalist system that teach a competitive rather
than cooperative ethic, thereby creating “winners” and “losers” by which to
declare some folks special and others not special. Meanwhile, we also have the political
imperatives of a republic that ask us to judge individuals as more or less
representative of classes of groups and the concomitant overgeneralizations
about those groups, thereby promoting a society based on demography and not
democracy. These imperatives provide
means for teaching the message that a person is special, but they struggle with
providing the means for teaching the corollary message that everyone else is
special, too. And, so, when we start to
see problems with the “You’re special” side of the message, we turn the wrong
way, toward “You’re not special,” rather than toward the much more hopeful and
affirming message of “And don’t forget that everyone else is special, too.”
How about this time we eschew the discouraging message of
the former path and instead give that more encouraging latter path a better
try?
