"everybody is special" ---> What does that mean

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Parents, teachers, people in general say this. "Everybody is special". Do you think that's true, or really just a few people are special? do you consider yourself special???

The statement "everyone is special" is an empty phrase constantly repeated on the show "Barney and Friends." It's part of the fad, making kids feel good about themselves whether they deserve it or not, and the "Barney" show is notorious for it.

In fact, there's actually a song called "Everyone Is Special." Click on the link for the lyrics. Brings back memories, doesn't it?
http://www.martylloyd.com/artist_b/barney_lyrics/you_are_special_lyrics.html

Let's read it this way:

Everybody=All the kids in the class
Special=Super great!

So if "Everybody" is "Special" does that mean that "All the kids in the class" are "super great!"?

I don't think so. It's just another form of generalizing. What should be said is "Everybody is different." That's a safer and more accurate generalization, isn't it? Does hearing that everybody is special make you feel warm and fuzzy? Does it make you think to yourself "I'm special" or does it make you feel like everyone belongs on the short bus? How do you know if you are more special than the person next to you or vice versa? How does your teacher know that? How is everyone's special-ness being measured? Is everyone's special-ness being taken into account?

Does saying that everybody is special miss the point? It seems to me that it just nullifies the word and makes you feel regular, common, ordinary, just like everyone else...because everyone else is special, right? Doesn't special mean exceptional? Is that kid beats you up and that takes your lunch money exceptional? No...he's especially a bully. And that definitley doesn't make him super great.

Everybody IS NOT special. Everybody IS different. We are all individuals and cannot measure each other's unique talents against each other.

Sorry for the rant.

"Everybody's Special" means "Y'all are ret*d."

Any English teacher using the expresssion should be sacked.

At best, and it's pushing it, "Everybody is special" might convey the idea, rather poorly expressed, that everyone is an individual.

It's much more likely to represent fuzzy thinking, or the avoidance of thinking at all.

Not everything can be special. It's a linguistic nonsense:

"What's your speciality?" "I specialise in everything"
It's on a par with "make everything a priority".

It's camouflage, trying to protect the speaker from having to acknowledge different abilities and priorities. Which exist.

In any group setting (from family to classroom to planet!) there are the needs of the group, and the needs of the individual. There will therefore be a degree of inherent conflict. Negotiating that is a basic issue of civilisation.

Denying it is to engage in fantasy.

Everybody is special except for indentical twins and plumbers.

There are people who are truly special, and I have met a few.

My brother is one of them.


Though in regards to the phrase, I like this exchange from The Inredibles:
The dad - "Everyone is special"
The kid - "That's just another way of saying no one is."
(forgot their names)

"Everybody is special!" means, "Hey look, y'all, I'm politically correct! Wheee!! !"

When I know what I want I feel special but to feel valued needed and appreciated is extremely important, I think.

"Everybody is special" does not mean anything. It is just another one of those vague and ambiguous expressions that do not really mean anything in particular. It is a waste of breath to say it. It irritates me when people say things that are so vague and ambiguous and meaningless.

Each of you is special. You are an experiment of nature; there's never been anything like you in the past, and there will never again be one of you. In all the lifetime of this pretty planet you are the only one of you that will ever exist. You are special. Now it's mostly up to you to determine whether the experiment was a success or not.

And I'm as anti politically-correct as a person can be.

My personal opinion is that it's just another BS platitude to make the un-special feel better.

Incidentally, I've never really felt "special" and believed it.

An individual, yes, but not that special... There's too many others to be "Special"

"Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine."

Kipling's The Last Department puts it in perspective.

Or Shakespeare's "poor player" strutting and fretting his hour on the stage.
Strut and fret away! It's what we have. But temporary one of billions is what we are.

I think it's true that everybody is special.Everybody has its own unique personality that doesn't exist a second time and needs to be respected and charished as a member of human community.
There are no two people that are totally the same,and even if they were,they were still special in the way that they are human beings which gives them their unconditional value.