Deadly Self Esteem

Absolutely- Self esteem based on no accomplishment is merely an illusion, which can be broken by the slightest puncture to its most delicate underpinnings.

The way for a child to develop true self esteem is by accomplishing, and becoming proud of the accomplishment. This gives the child the incentive to accomplish more and more, and further develops TRUE self esteem.

Nobody can GIVE a child true self esteem. He has to earn it himself.

Noddy, I'm fascinated by this self-esteem instruction taught in schools, having never heard anything about it. Can you guide me to a link or something detailing the program?
It sure would answer alot of questions for me concerning young adults today.

eoe--

I lived through the Self Esteem Theory when my stepsons were in school. I just googled for "self esteem" and found dozens of sites.

I was shocked. I thought "self-esteem" was dead and gone. No such luck. "Self esteem is a hardy perennial.

This site seems fairly typical:

http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/

Read and weep.

Heres an example of Self Esteem Lessons being taught in classrooms. Apart from the warm fuzzies, I hope this teacher had an actual lesson plan that looked this good.

My much younger cousins were talking about this the other day. They had to write down one nice thing about each person in the class whether they meant it or not. It was a lesson in building another person's self-esteem.

"Class, today we're going to learn how to lie to each other. It will build up your false hope that other people actually like you."

I don't know. All I know is that these are the things that make me not want to have children.

I saw this question on my way out the door, Noddy, and I thought about it while playing in the backyard, and made notes, even.

I'm going to start with a general concept which I have spoken about before, something I long suspected and became more and more sure of through college, student teaching, teaching, administration, and now motherhood. That concept is that good teaching cannot be taught.

I really think it is something people have or don't, and formal education is very helpful and useful but does not make a person a good teacher. I.e., person A, with formal teacher training, is a good teacher, better than he/she would have been without such training. Person B, with formal training, is a bad teacher, and no amount of training will change that.

So, what happens, is a good teacher has students who do well. This good teacher has a high tolerance for ambiguity, excellent instincts, excellent people-reading skills, etc. Because the good teacher seems to be successful at teaching, the good teacher's methods are examined. A-ha! The students in the good teacher's class receive a lot of praise. They have good self-esteem. That must be why they are doing well.

Because there are a lot of good teachers but also a lot of bad teachers, a lot of this method-examining takes place, and then there is an attempt to generalize it. So the bad teachers are told -- Praise! Self-esteem is good!

Then we have situations in which everyone gets a prize and everyone writes something nice about everyone else whether they believe it or not. The method has been implemented. The bad teacher says, "I did what I was supposed to do. The method must have been flawed."

Meanwhile, what the good teacher did in a natural, instinctual way -- praise where praise was due -- was not a bad thing. It was in fact a good thing. I have seen the benefits firsthand. At my center in L.A., I worked with kids who had been told how worthless and stupid they were their whole lives. You should have seen their faces when I told one that he had a great idea, or another that it was wonderful how she was helping her classmates, or a third that that color blue looked great on him. I never made anything up, but I always found something to praise.

And they responded. Man, did they respond. And my praise went from shirt colors to A's on tests to "Congrats on your great new job. You deserve it."

If praise is deserved and in the context of rigorous standards and high expectations, I have no problem with it. If it is a method implemented by bad teachers, I have a problem with it, and further have a problem with the bad teachers who sully a perfectly decent concept.

Soz- Agree- A child KNOWS when he is being manipulated. A child KNOWS when he is being praised for something he does not deserve. I agree with you that positive reinforcement is wonderful for encouraging young people, when there is a reason for the reinforcement. I don't believe in nitpicking, when children try, and don't succeed. They need to hear that the teacher (or parent) has acknowledged that the child has tried!

Sozobe--

You've made an excellent point--"the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life".

Sugar--

Had I been fool enough to assign "Write one Nice Thing about everyone in the Class" and had a little snot nosed brat ask,

"But what if there isn't anything nice to say?"

I'd retort (and self-esteem for the snot-nosed brat, be damned) then you must be a very mean, unhappy sniveling person with two blind eyes and a deformed soul because there is something good to be said about every one of us.

I have read several letters to Dear Abby/Ann Landers saying that these crumpled classroom assignments were found in the wallets of young people who died untimely or produced when the kids came back to visit the in the little red school house.

I also remember Slambooks. Every girl had a notebook and each page was labeled with the name of a classmate. You wrote down what you REALLY thought (signed or unsigned) and slammed the book.

Slambooks were not good for self esteem--nor is forced, faint praise.

Noddy24- Ohmygosh- Slambooks- I hadn't thought about them in DECADES. I may have one somewhere. I had a box of old love letters, a dried up sea horse, and a bracelet that a boyfriend gave me when I was sixteen. The slambook was in that box. Now, if I could only remember where I put it!!!

A sad smile. Teachers and parents and just plain human beings have the responsibility of being guides. If others do not choose to follow, there is really nothing else that can be done. There only remains one thought. Who is there for us to follow, if we can not be leaders?

As most of you know, I don't write essays in response to questions. As Browning observed: "She had a heart too soon made glad."

Do me a favor please. Look at my post on the Black Dahlia case. Tell me how you feel about that detective.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6785&highlight=

Excellent thread, Noddy!

I do, however, have an argument about the classroom assignment ~ because it was different for me.

My fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Farnham, was a 'free spirit' and a great teacher. Anything I know about being kind, decent and caring, I credit Mr. Farnham for teaching me.

The 'say something nice' assignment was eye-opening for me. So, we all sat in our cirlce and went around with our comments.

When we got to a kid who said the standard 'he/she is nice', Mr. Farnham would prompt that child to go further.....'why is he/she nice?', and so on.

When it was my turn, I was asked to say something nice about Julie. A classmate that I did not hang around with and barely knew. But, she always had a smile on her face ~ it seemed to me that she was always happy. So, I said 'Julie reminds me of the color yellow because she is always smiling and happy'. Not only did Julie blush, but Mr. Farnham gave me a wink.....yes, I remember this as if it were yesterday.

The next person in line was Mark. And he had to say something nice about me. Again, another kid that I didn't hang out with/didn't know at all except for being his classmate. He said 'Lorraine always has something nice to say about everyone and you can tell that she means it'.

After this assignment, Julie and I became buddies, and Mark and I swapped 'Bay City Roller' albums......of which we were allowed to bring into class on Fridays.

I'm writing a book.....sorry.....

My father destroyed my self esteem and confidence. His words still haunt me...
Sometimes I can't get them out of my head.It feels like a self forfilling curse.
I cannot beleave how effected I am by all of this... Can one ever escape from their fathers hurtfull comments ?

alkeme8- Welcome to Able2Know!

Yes, it is very difficult to get away from a noxious childhood............but it can be done, if you want to badly enough. Have you ever spoken with your father about how he treated you as a child? Is he still alive? Is he someone with whom you can talk, now?

Many parents who degraded their children as youngsters, did so out of their own emotional difficulties and insecurities. It really had nothing to do with with the child. The problem is, that kids believe their parents, and that could really mess a kid up.

One very powerful thing that you can do is to write your father a letter. Let it all out. Tell him exactly how you feel, and how he hurt you when you were a child. Then, with a bit of ceremony, burn the letter.

Hmmmm - I can see why people are concerned about this self-esteem thing, if it is done badly and clumsily - I cannot comment on what is done in the USA, so I will say nothing more abou tthat.

However - do people recall the "headstart" program - I think it was called - for black kids, in the 60's or 70's? Where these kids were told again and again how great they were - as a sort of corrective to the racist crap they were getting in so many other places?

Well, I understand this fell out of favour - that the kids showed some initial improvement, but it did not last.

At a conference the other day, (so I can't reference, sorry), we were told that follow-up research on these kids has shown that they have, in fact, done a lot better over the years than a well-matched cohort WITHOUT the intervention.

Now - which BIT of that program, or which BITS, made the difference we will probably never know - but it is an interesting finding.

Let us not condemn too heartily.

I agree. After reading up on the program, you really can't say that it's all bad. There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, in teaching a child to feel good about oneself and to appreciate the good qualities in others. But where does this attitude that the world owes them something simply because they are here come from? That's what's most baffling to me about many of the young people I meet. They don't want to work for it and don't seem to even understand the concept of earning anything. They expect to be given the position, the title, the car, the respect, etc. just because they're here.

Entitlement. Yeah. I've seen a lot of that.

And I DO think these programs can be done badly -- my letter/ spirit point. The spirit is fine and lovely and I support it wholeheartedly. But when it is done by rote, by letter with no spirit, I think it has unfortunate effects.

For example, I read a study that showed that when children perceived that praise was unearned, they sometimes stopped believing any praise -- real praise. So when they were given a trophy no matter how well (or badly) they did in the competition, they stopped valuing the trophy they got when they really earned it.

And that is something that totally happens -- a competition is held and everyone gets a trophy. "For trying." But even if they don't try, they get one. That is just plumb silly.

I'm here to say YES YOU CERTAINLY CAN ALKEME8 !!
I never got any self esteem from my own mean parents, I
had to learn how to do it myself... but it can be done, and you
can do it too. It must have been WAY different from when I
was a kid in school even though that was a long time ago - late
1950's when I learned to read, write etc. My daughters were
schooled in the period which you describe - there was way too
much experimental education going on then and everybody
suffered from it. They got a lesser education and ZERO
improvement in self esteem as far as I can tell. I don't know
what idiot decided that public school was the better place to
teach a child self esteem - but anyone with half a brain would
know that it could never be in the public schools. The schools
are already imbued with a caste system that would put India
to shame. Also, the schools kept changing from one method
to another - one semester the students were "self paced" then
the next semester they were back to the old way, then - they
began using computers. It reminded me of my high school
geometry class where we had to suffer thru 3 different teachers
during one school year and nobody in that class did well at all..
I must say that I'm proud of my 3 daughters for doing as well
as they did in school, but Pennsylvania was always a state that
placed a very high value on their educational systems.

Wait wait wait "experimental education" ain't always bad. I spent all of my elementary school years in the hippiest dippiest school you can imagine and it was fantastic. It was a public school. Students were from very rich families and very poor families and from all kinds of different races and cultures. I had two teachers in 6 years -- one class had 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders combined, the other had 4th, 5th, and 6th graders combined. The classrooms were strange and individualized -- my 4th-6th grade classroom had a loft surrounding much of it where we had our little desk areas, which were mostly for storing our pencils, and we spent much of our time in "circle", and sang songs with our guitar-playing teacher at least once a day.

And I got an absolutely stellar education.

There was recently a discussion here about skipping grades, and I mentioned how it was a non-issue for me because I was encouraged to achieve as much as I could -- if I wanted to do 8th grade math when I was in 4th grade, well, then, here's an 8th grade math book. Have fun.

I am still in touch with many of my classmates and it really seems like a disproportionate number became "successful" by whatever measure you want -- doctors, lawyers, documentary filmmakers, etc., etc.

Good ideas can be implemented badly. That doesn't mean the ideas are bad.

I get it, Sozobe. And you are so right. That whole reasoning that the other kids will feel bad if they don't get a trophy too?! Where in the hell did that concept come from? There was a situation with the last Winter Olympics, in the pairs skating competition, where they resolved the conflict with just that way of thinking. It was the most childish and immature thing I'd ever heard. Does anyone remember what happened? Two teams got the gold medal or something silly like that. Was it the Canadian team and the Russian or German team? I'll look it up but if anyone else recalls what happened, please feel free to refresh us.