I just finished proofreading another professor’s sabbatical leave project for her (she teaches ECE), and she happened to mention that the child’s self-esteem does not seem to be an issue in other countries’ educational systems the way it is here.
Is it exclusive to the U.S. ? And how did it get to be such an issue here, anyway?
I don’t remember anyone worrying about it when I was in K-12 (70s-80s).
I’m not an expert on it by any means but I don’t remember it being much of an issue when I was in school either and I just graduated in 2000. Some teachers were assholes and very verbally abusive, some were pretty nice and tried to make learning as fun as possible, but the majority seemed to exist in the vast medium between the two extremes… they definitely didn’t seem to coddled like my six year old nephew and four old niece are.
I can remember my older brother being given reading on self-esteem issues when he was in his teens (and an utter dick, to boot). This was in Australia in the early 90s. I also remember the phrase being bandied about in health classes when I was a teenager.
Perhaps not an exclusive US concept, then.
Damn kids have it so easy these days. Back when I was in school, I tell you what…
As I recall (and please correct me if I get any of this wrong!), an article in Scientific American a while back described research into the self esteem issue and reported two things:
Though it was conventional wisdom that self esteem was important for young people, no studies had demonstrated this.
Psychological tests for self esteem showed that violent offenders in prison had more self esteem than people on average.
I think the researchers suggested that tactics to artifically inflate the self esteem of students probably increased antisocial and violent behavior.
Napier: I do remember reading something like that.
I’ve always thought that young people could develop a sense of self-esteem by working to achieve things rather than by having trophies and praise handed out to them for any reason, or no reason at all.
The self-esteem movement seems to have conflated cause and effect. They noted that students who achieve generally have good self-esteem and assumed that improving students’ self-esteem would improve their achievements. It didn’t seem to occur to them that good self-esteem is the result of achievement, not the cause.
A cautionary tale to all those who would confuse correlation with causition.
I don’t recall it ever being an issue when I was in school ('80s, mostly), and both of my parents (both public schoolteachers) have said it’s never been an issue for either of them. Best I can tell, it’s just a phantom issue that Mallard Filmore and the right-wing columnists like to bring up whenever they do one of their “liberal teachers are destroying America!” rants.