ABSTRACT
Students are hugely motivated by the feeling that they are special. Initially, they may feel special because they are becoming architects, engineers, economists, scientists and so on. But in a class of 400, how special can you logically feel? Is it illusory if you derive motivational force from feeling special? How much do we rely on cultivating the student’s conceit by feeling talented as a distinction? This chapter explores the paradox that the word ‘special’ derives from ‘species’, that is, a somewhat generic category where any distinction is mediated by a feeling of commonness. Historicizing the concept of feeling special, the chapter reveals that institutions have only grasped the primitive development of the metaphor which is convenient for marketing but not for pedagogy.
