Spoiled by self-esteem?
(Guest post by Steve Gigl)
Just out of curiousity (and prompted by this entry at SCSU Scholars): is there an easily determined starting date for the nationwide emphasis on self-esteem in education? A few Google searches suggest that it became popular in the 1980s, which might suggest that I am a "victim of self-esteem."
I have a couple of questions about all this, but first some personal history...
I did well in school, from grade school all the way through most of college (just one rough spot in undergrad and one in grad school so far). That's not boasting, because as most adults know, success in school doesn't translate to success after graduation.
As it turns out, my performance up through the first couple of years of college wasn't the result of hard work (although I wasn't a complete slacker), nor was it a result of built-in understanding or genius. The real hard work came later, when I realized that there were some basic math and science skills that I didn't have; while I passed the courses in which those skills were introduced, I never really learned the subject matter well enough to apply it to other situations.
Plus, in the first couple of years of college, I realized that I didn't know, er, anything compared to many people around me. Meeting people smarter than me was nothing new, but I eventually realized that I also didn't know how to learn some of that stuff, and I certainly didn't have the work ethic to drill myself on physics and calculus problems the way I should have. Still, even though college was less forgiving, I was helped mightily by the grading curves and got by with decent grades.
I had one class as an undergrad in which the professor, the notorious Dr. Peria, didn't let people slide by. I damn near failed the class, and ended up retaking it because a) I was stubborn and actually interested in the material, and b) I could erase the original D from my GPA if I did better. As you would hope, I learned a lot more the second time around and earned a much better grade. So I probably owe what little studying ability I have to Prof. Peria, the ornery old coot, but even at 28 I'm still "learning how to learn" complex concepts.
Well, all that blather was to set up two questions: 1) Is it likely that I am a recovering "victim" of self-esteem-based education, spoiled by earning praise and good grades even though I wasn't learning some of the basics? 2) Does anyone else out there in my age group (late 20s) suspect the same thing of their education?
No, I'm not looking for victim status; that's why I couldn't resist putting scare quotes around "victim" when I used it. I am merely wondering whether I might be a case study of self-esteem-emphasis in education, while freely admitting that I might just be a whiner who was slow to adapt and put his nose to the grindstone.
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December 23, 2004 01:53 PM
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If I recall correctly, at least here in California, the "self-esteem" moevement in education was started by Senator John Vasconcellos, one of the nuttier Dems in California. It's funny, I remember it being mocked, but the education establishment apparently really picked up on it. For better or worse, I missed it.
Posted by: JamesPh. at December 23, 2004 02:05 PMI suspect you're more a "victim" of "modern teaching methods" and their influence. Much of this educational madness started in the late 60s and really took hold in the early 80s as the graduates of the 60s began to get more influence in the traditionally hide-bound educational establishment. The graduates of the 60s rejected the traditonal to try new things and frankly the results have been pretty poor. You only have to look at the miserable failures of "New Math" and "Whole Language" to see the effects that the revolution have had. Both of those methods can serve the 10% that aren't well reached by traditional methods, but the effects on the skills of the 90% who are well served by traditional methods are detrimental.
As to learning, it is a skill, and it used to be taught in schools at least here in the Midwest. I'm old enough to have caught the tail end of it, and my father is old enough to have taught it. He was a researcher and professor of psychology, but he began teaching a college level course in how to study and learn. What started out as a small class offered once a year at a Big 10 school grew massively over the years as students came to college and suddenly discovered they didn't know how to learn.
So don't feel badly about not knowing how to learn. It's a skill that can be learned (usually), but it's a shame it isn't actively taught in many places anymore.
Posted by: nerdbert at December 23, 2004 11:36 PMCall it what you want, but the same thing has happened in public education as has happened in the Democratic Party, which is no surprise considering how long the Democratic Party has been in league with the teachers' unions, textbook publishers, and the tenants of the Ivory Tower. You were generally educated in a vacuum taught by the radicals who drank the 1960s vintage of the liberal/socialist Kool-Aid we see today. Take heart. Your struggle has more to do with your instincts about what is right and just than it has to do with your learning skills. You indeed learned, despite all efforts to the contrary, to think critically. What you lacked was the reinforcement of your ideas and the opportunity to freely express them. If you doubt it, consider that today we have university "speech codes" in the realm of higher "learning." Contrary ideas are not allowed. You must be assimilated.
What has been missing from our curriculae for a generation is an emphasis on analysis and the ability to read and write clearly. It has been replaced with a strident effort to obtain conformity, to stress "inclusion" as opposed to independence. This is why, for instance, we now have government programs to feed children breakfast, lunch and dinner while destroying the natural tendency of children to honor God and family in their public life. "Conformity" has been the maxim of a generation, not the pursuit of knowledge, so it is little wonder that you never learned to study and now belabor under the misguided notion that you did not learn to learn.
You did learn, but you were not rewarded for having learned. What you learned was that the path of least resistance was the safe source of your integrity while you figured out the other stuff. It is not that other students were smarter, it's just that they had more information. The key to learning is not the full command of facts and figures, but the ability to think critically enough that you know where to look them up. The process leads to your independence, which is why, for a generation, we were not taught. Instead, we learned that Heather has two mommies, that Christmas is offensive, that competition harms the senses, that our Founding Fathers were all a bunch of angry white male slaveholders, and that America is raping Mother Earth.
Apparently, you were a poor student and are now to be congratulated on your own good sense.
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