DAVID MCCULLOUGH, JR. TO SPEAK AT THE WELLESLEY CLUB’S JANUARY 13TH MEETING

The featured speaker will be author and Wellesley High School teacher, David McCullough, Jr..  Born in Boston in 1958, David McCullough is a graduate of Lafayette College and the Bread Loaf School of English.  For twenty-six years he has taught English, first at Punahou School in Honolulu and for the last decade at Wellesley High School.  He lives with his wife and four children in Sudbury.

In the wake of his now-famous graduation speech, he has written a rumination on the raising and educating of teenagers, You Are Not Special and Other Encouragements, which will be published in the spring of 2014.  In You Are Not Special, McCollough explores how, for what purpose, and for whose sake, we are raising our kids.  With wry, affectionate humor, McCollough takes on hovering parents, ineffectual schools, professional college prep, electronic distractions, club sports, and generally the manifestations, and the applications and consequences of privilege.  By acknowledging that the world is indifferent to them, McCollough takes pressure off of student to be extraordinary achievers and instead exhorts them to roll up their sleeves and do something useful with their advantages.