As a teenager, I plowed through just about every book then written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Though I would be hard pressed, over a decade later, to recall any of those works in great detail, one of their less impressive projects, the Darksword books, included a passage that has, for some reason, stuck with me over the years. A young man is asked to explain why he was admitted early to an institution of some prestige:

"I'm a mathematical genius," Saryon answered in the same nonchalant tone he might have used in saying "I am tall," or "I am male."

Today I'd like to discuss two very important and possibly related words: special and celebrity.

Chapter One: Homogenization

My wife and I recently enrolled our oldest daughter into the First Grade, but unlike the other twenty-some children in her class, her first day of First Grade was also her first day of elementary school. She turned 5 just a few months ago and, based on her advanced intelligence, we determined to skip her past Kindergarten.

This is not an uncommon approach to challenging gifted children, and it has proven overwhelmingly beneficial in extensive studies of the practice. But before committing, we pondered the choice and researched it extensively. And over the course of our inquiry, we encountered some startling and, frankly, alarming attitudes about education.

One response was, "Why would you do that?" followed by, "Will the school let you do that?"

Another was, predictably, "How do you think your daughter will feel when all her classmates are driving and she's not?"

But by far the most common reaction was the look. You know, the sort of glazed-eyed, plaster-smiled, conflict-dodging look you give people when they think they're special and you happen to know they aren't. I admit, I've given people this look. I try to reserve it for adults, as know-it-all children often seem a great deal more egotistical than they really are, but let's face it: some folks really think they know it all, and their confidence in their ignorance is unflappable. The best you can do is let them finish their inane ramblings and change the subject.

(For what it's worth, as the king of lost causes this is one excellent lesson I have yet to internalize. I will correct a pompous windbag a thousand times, knowing every time that it will do no good. Corollary: I have yet to meet anyone with the stamina/patience/masochism to spend more time correcting me than I can spend being a pompous windbag.)

When I get this look from an educator, I die a little inside. Not because it means they are already forming inaccurate judgments about me as a parent and my daughter as a student, though they are certainly doing that. No, I suffer because I know that the educators who rapidly adopt the position that I am a pushy parent (true) trying to make up for my own personal failings by overestimating my child's abilities (false) has every reason to feel as they do.

Because I know that, in a classroom of twenty students, at least ten of them (hopefully more!) have parents who firmly believe that "my child is really something special."

There's a sense in which they are right, of course. Their children are special, and a thousand thousand scrapbook-blogs stand testament to this truth. But I guarantee that these parents are not thinking of their children as "special" in some philosophical, every-individual-is-special-in-their-own-way sense of special. No, these parents genuinely believe that their child is the brightest, the sweetest, the most well-behaved, and so on. They aren't talking about their kids growing up to be sanitation workers or office assistants or telemarketers; they're too busy raising astronauts and doctors and Presidents of the United States of America (the politicians, not the musicians). Their children aren't "special," their children are special. Parental love is cool like that, I suppose.

But of course as an educator it must wear thin. So I am forced to remind them, very gently (as I understand their frustration), that in every classroom there will be one or two or three students who really are smarter--on a normalized, objectively verifiable scale--than the rest of their peers. No matter how many people think their child is the "smartest," someone's child actually is.

"So what?" comes the inevitable rejoinder. "My C student beat up (or knocked up) your honor student," comes the bumper-sticker reply. "You think your kid is better than mine?"

Well, no. At least, not in the sense that all human life is precious, that all human beings have worth, that everyone is "created equal." Or, if you prefer, not in the Hobbesian sense that even the strong must sleep and thus we are all one toothbrush-grip shiv away from the greatest equalizer of them all.

But to the extent that knowing and understanding more constitutes a kind of "betterness," yes. And it is my responsibility as her parent to see to it that my daughter's talents are not stifled or squandered or stunted by a one-size-fits-all model of education.

In all of this, an interesting conundrum. If you think you're special in this way, you may be right--but you may nonetheless only think you're special in this way because almost everyone thinks of themselves this way. And quite regardless of whether you're right or wrong, no one will believe you. Because people who suggest that they or their offspring are "better" in even one sense are assumed to be egotistical jerks who could not possibly be any different than anyone else.

And a syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two, he has never known anything to write home about. Three, it is nothing to write home about . . .

That's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This is the mindset--I have never known anyone special, I know you, you must not be special! No matter how many times we tell ourselves that everyone is special, what we usually mean by "special" is TV stars, professional athletes, politicians. The wealthy and the powerful, natch. And if you have never known someone famous, it seems unlikely in the extreme that anyone you meet could actually be special (read: worth your attention).

...until suddenly, you are.

Chapter Two: Delineation

All appearances to the contrary, this is not really an entry about my daughter's brilliance. Rather, my experience enrolling her in the First Grade is just the latest concrete example in my long-running struggle with the conflicting ideologies of elitism and egalitarianism. You may recall an earlier blog entry where I struggled with the notion of honors accumulating unnecessarily, where people who proved themselves "better" in one sense were assumed to be better in various unrelated ways. It seems clear, analytically, that "betterness" is not a binary proposition, but that's exactly how we treat it--a sort of "phase transition" of specialness whereby ordinary folk become celebrities the way water can heat gradually, with no change in appearance, before erupting into steam.

It's true that there are gradations, levels of "celebrity" which garner increased media attention, heightened "fan" response, and so forth. But while one can be a "minor celebrity," saying someone is "practically a celebrity" is invariably calculated hyperbole. Celebrities endure problems most people cannot fathom as problematic; they are plagued by an overabundance of things most people can never get enough of.

Take the latest Stephenie Meyer drama, for example. I should point out that while, yes, my wife is a friend of Stephenie's, I have spoken to the woman only two or three times in my life. I do not know her, and nothing I say here has any basis in my wife's conversations with her. In fact, just about everything I am about to say is rank speculation. But Stephenie's quandary is illustrative and so I will employ it, recognizing as I do so that I have added my name to the list of people who relate to Stephenie as a phenomenon rather than as a human being--a list my remarkable wife continues to evade.

Anyhow, someone got a bound copy of the first twelve chapters of Stephenie's (formerly?) forthcoming Midnight Sun, scanned them into a PDF, and uploaded them to the Internet. This is not the first time Stephenie's work has been "leaked," but it is to the best of my knowledge the most egregious violation of her authorial rights to date. I don't think Midnight Sun even had a formal release date, but I could be wrong about that.

I'll leave the speculation regarding who, how, and why to others; because the pirated PDF is scanned from a very neatly-bound copy, suffice it to note that the manuscript appears to have escaped some pretty official distribution channels. What interests me more is the nature of the distribution. I mean, anyone who has ever tried to break into publishing can tell you that rejection is plentiful, acceptance is rare. Most people can't even sell a completed book. Can you imagine hammering out twelve chapters (according to Stephenie, twelve unedited, "rough" chapters!) and having someone go out of their way to steal it, then, once it has been posted to the Internet, having thousands upon thousands of someones go out of their way to get it, read it, discuss it, and otherwise go completely berserk over it? I mean, when you're just starting out, it's hard to get anyone to read your stuff!

This is what I mean when I say "plagued by an overabundance of things most people can never get enough of." Too much love, too much adoration, too much attention. How difficult is it to imagine "too much" of these things? I suspect Stephenie genuinely appreciates her legions of adoring fans, but clearly, in those legions lurk some bona fide stalker-grade emotional vampires (if you'll pardon the terminology).

And this is a woman who wrote some books. Imagine what it must be like for actors and politicians! Whatever her challenges, at least Stephenie doesn't have to contend with paparazzi, right? Still, her work is over-scrutinized, certainly, and there is a pretty hardcore contingent of folks who go out of their way to express their displeasure with every word she writes. Like I said, gradations...

So, having earned herself some fame, Stephenie is thronged by a zillion psychic leeches, but on the "up" side, no one can deny that she is special, that everything she does (or at least writes) is inherently more important than the things most people do. No one is going to give Stephenie that glazed-eyed, plaster-smiled, conflict-dodging look again... at least, not if they know who she is. d^_^b People will defer to her in matters completely unrelated to her literary accomplishments. There will probably be some exceptions, but I doubt there will be many.

Chapter Three: Vascillation

One of the first humorous things I ever bothered to print from the Internet--well over ten years ago--was the "Laws of Anime." One of those is the Law of Musical Omnipotance, which states:

Any character capable of musical talent (singing, playing an instrument, etc.) is automatically capable of doing much more "simple" things like piloting mecha, fighting crime, stopping an intergalactic war, and so on... especially if they have never attempted these things before.

A common theme in anime--and, for that matter, pretty much every escapist medium you could name--is the challenge of proving one's latent "specialness," in overcoming the presumption of "not special." Another is the reverse, the Notting Hill effect--special people who long for the freedom of anonymity, the lowered pressure and more realistic expectations enjoyed by the commoners. The grass is always greener on the other side, et cetera.

So there you have it. One day you're fighting tooth-and-nail to secure your precocious child the tiniest advantage, and the next you're wondering why there are sixteen photographers stalking the property line with telephoto lenses. In that most fascinating of logical conundrums, you can scarcely want what you already have, and we humans are so adept at wanting! So we watch our anime or read our romances and project ourselves onto the main characters, who we know are special people, just like ourselves. That inventor's daughter loves to read, just like me! Surely she will do amazing things with her life; unlike the villagers, who have somehow completely ignored the apparently vacant castle since time immemorial, she will discover what's inside! She wants much more than this... provincial life.

But how often do we presume the same thing about the stories unfolding all around us?

Now we close the circle. It seems manifestly obvious that some people are more special than others, but also that most "special" people are more like the ordinary ones than you'd think. The potential exists for everyone around you, no matter how seemingly common, to cross that threshold at some future point for reasons yet unknown. So the practical thing is to behave accordingly, I think. To suppress the urge to adopt that glazed-eyed, plaster-smiled, conflict-dodging, condescending look. To give the "benefit of the doubt" to everyone the way you give it to celebrities; to respect personal boundaries with celebrities the way you respect them with everybody else.

I think I will find it challenging. It turns out that I am a terribly, terribly judgmental person, and to make matters worse, I'm almost always right.

Guess I'm just special like that. d^_~b