June 7, 2012
I tell students they are not "magical and unique snowflakes".
This guy did it better:
“Here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume … shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your diploma … but for your name, exactly the same.
All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.
You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 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.”
“It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune … one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School … where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You’re it or you’re not.”
Yes, we still compare basketball players to Michael Jordan.
And they can never be as good as Michael Jordan.
So our best players are never good enough.
Then Michael Jordan happened, and the Jordan Brand, and every playoff game became a referendum on immortality, which Jordan would win. The selling point was that we were watching the greatest player ever. And but then the player, the singular embodiment of basketball excellence, retired and unretired and retired and got old and unretired and retired for real, at last, while the job description he'd created stayed open. Kobe Bryant performed the duties as a sort of temp or long-term contractor, but in the end—no, not him.
Now that leaves James, the Chosen One, begging the question with both parts of his nickname. If choosing is how these things are decided, and if what is chosen is a One, then everything was settled before he even graduated from high school. Yet the public and the basketball press is unsatisfied. LeBron is a choker. LeBron is the MVP. LeBron is overpowering. LeBron is timid. LeBron is the greatest player alive and hopelessly overrated.
It would be fun to turn NBA commenters loose on a Rock-Scissors-Paper tournament sometime:
ROCK IS UNSTOPPABLE.
I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW ROCK CHOKED AGAINST PAPER.
WHEN YOU LOOK AT HOW SCISSORS BEAT PAPER, YOU HAVE TO THINK SCISSORS IS IN THE CONVERSATION FOR ALL-TIME GREATEST.
Cool sports bar in Columbia City.
So Seattle.
2.50 Rainiers during Happy Hour, vegan "Field Roast" substitutions, and there's some kind of teacher happy hour on Thursdays.
(They don't have it listed on the website, but I SWEAR I saw it in the bar.)
Today's Photo:
I know it's 2012, but when I see this, I still want to pump my fist in the air.
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