For the past several decades, we as a society have focused on raising people’s self-esteem more than on working hard or setting goals or achieving things or being honest or trustworthy. According to a new survey of college freshmen, we as a society have succeeded. Hooray for us! Aren’t we awesome!
About nine million young people have filled out the American Freshman Survey, since it began in 1966.
It asks students to rate how they measure up to their peers in a number of basic skills areas – and over the past four decades, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being “above average” for academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability and self-confidence.
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Twenge adds that while the Freshman Survey shows that students are increasingly likely to label themselves as gifted in writing ability, objective test scores indicate that actual writing ability has gone down since the 1960s.
But isn’t high self-esteem good? Doesn’t it lead to success in life?
“If there is any effect at all, it is quite small,” says Roy Baumeister of Florida State University. He was the lead author of a 2003 paper that scrutinised dozens of self-esteem studies.
He found that although high self-esteem frequently had a positive correlation with success, the direction of causation was often unclear. For example, are high marks awarded to people with high self-esteem or does getting high marks engender high self-esteem?
And a third variable can influence both self-esteem and the positive outcome.
“Coming from a good family might lead to both high self-esteem and personal success,” says Baumeister.
“Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported as a cause of personal success. Despite my years invested in research on self-esteem, I reluctantly advise people to forget about it.”
Self-control. I remember reading about that in a list, along with other antiquated notions like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. But those values don’t lead to high self-esteem, so feel free to ignore them.
Forsyth and Kerr studied the effect of positive feedback on university students who had received low grades (C, D, E and F). They found that the weaker students actually performed worse if they received encouragement aimed at boosting their self-worth.
“An intervention that encourages [students] to feel good about themselves, regardless of work, may remove the reason to work hard,” writes Baumeister.
If you’re a good person, people like you and you’re well above average just like everybody else, you’ll read the whole fascinating thing.
I wonder, where does all the self-love go when one’s unrealistic expectations are not met? What does it turn into?
“I wonder, where does all the self-love go when one’s unrealistic expectations are not met? What does it turn into?”
It goes into demands for the government to make reparations for society’s failure to recognize how important you are.
Fortunately, there is always a politician eager to comply by taking other people’s stuff away from them to give to you.
“I wonder, where does all the self-love go when one’s unrealistic expectations are not met? What does it turn into?”
Hatred and it’s all the fault of: Bush, Republicans, rich people, the NRA, their parents, old white guys, dog ate the homework, etc., etc., etc.. The fact that they were fed a load of BS in their beloved schools, elementary through college or university, has no bearing on it what so ever.
“Twenge adds that while the Freshman Survey shows that students are increasingly likely to label themselves as gifted in writing ability, objective test scores indicate that actual writing ability has gone down since the 1960s.”
All you need do is look at internet blogs and comments boards to see that too many of our younger generation cannot spell worth a damn and their grammar is atrocious. My wife tries to teach English in middle school but she says it seems to be a loosing battle. Too many kids are more interested in anything but school and when she tries to approach their parents, she gets a load of attitude.
I’ll second the motion for the average student in math and sciences. The STEM type courses for poets, etc..
There is a small minority of students who take these courses seriously enough to try the Honors and AP versions. About ten percent of enrollment…the rest head for “Environmental Studies” type courses (I had one who transferred out of my Honors Chemistry for that destination) so that they become “Environmental Consultants” and “help write environmental regulations”.
Needless to say, they are usually flunking HChem by a wide margin, especially when the math kicks in.
Morons all…they can’t write either. Their homework and lab reports are atrocious and jargon filled (mis-spelled, of course) junk. It’s a pleasure to flunk them.
My wife tries to teach English in middle school but she says it seems to be a loosing battle.
Comments on blogs are often written in haste and are seldom proofread. I try to look for the thought behind the comments, although that’s often difficult to determine. As for typos and spelling errors, we all make them including your use of “loosing” instead of “losing.” Let him without typos cast the first snark.
For what it’s worth, I agree with him. I’m a professional proofreader, but I know I make my share of mistakes on these and other boards. I consider the Internet to be informal communication for the most part and let stuff pass. However, when at work, I regularly see stuff that makes my eyes bleed … from people who are degreed professionals. It seems that no one has the first clue how to use an apostrophe anymore, and that’s just the first woe that comes to mind.
Just the same, everyone, people who can actually write will still come across more clearly on blog comments, grammar errors and typos notwithstanding, than people who can’t write worth a damn.
I find this man to have a strangely compelling argument….
Just a friendly reminder. The world is full of advanced graduates who are poor at writing and or speaking properly. As for me, I’m far more interested in their thought and analytical processes towards some subject matter, than I am the grammer, construction, spelling, punctuation, etc. Also, all the correctness you speak too, is useless if somebody is talking unnecessarily ‘over’ their audience for some self serving motive.
This should not come as a shock since for the past few decades it hasn’t been PC to award based on merit. Everyone gets a trophy or certificate. There’s no incentive to try harder because you’ll get what everyone else gets regardless of the effort invested. Liberalism in a nutshell – make everyone a standard D-cell battery in the matrix and the big government machine will take care of you.
This is part and parcel with the school of thought that you shouldn’t grade with red pen because it’s “too agressive” and might make children feel bad.
Higher ed academics also detest slef-esteem courses, and they are resentful for having to give their students remedial work that should have been covered before those students even got to college.
I have no sympathy for these college professors. Their political leanings are such that they unswervingly vote for the very same types of people who create, aid, and abet the atrocious K-12 standards that scholars say they deplore.
I blame it on Prairie Home Companion
I concur. That was my first thought, exactly…..everyone’s above average!
Or, as noted in The Incredibles” — once everyone’s special, then no one is.
Isn’t that speeeshull?
LOL! You beat me to it. Grew up listening to that.
“That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men good looking, and all the children above average.”
They have not been promoting self-esteem. They have been promoting self-importance.
“They have been promoting self-importance.”
No shortage of evidence to prove it has succeeded! When you have a chance, go online to any number of blog sites and you’ll find all the evidence one needs.
I blame it on math teachers. By definition, half of them are below average.
“People’s self-esteem” is not some complex thing separate from working hard or setting goals or achieving things or being honest or trustworthy.! It comes from one achieving something meaningful-worthwhile.
Today, and quite sadly, the only place younger people have to achieve ‘anything’ is in a school environment. There is essentially no societal framework today, where children at a very young age, learn or have responsibility for anything meaninful. Fewer farms where children learn responsibility for tending to livestock, analytically fixing things, analytically modify and better some design, the value of honesty in being responsible, meeting a work ethic in return for an allowance and the list goes on. All most children have today is lots of unsupervised time in the home environment, cell phones, TV’s, digital movies, computers for anything but learning something valuable and video games.
So, as a results, were raising up generations of young who are among the worlds most educated educated ignorant and in many cases morons — but hey, they have a wall full of sheep skins and ten tons of intellectual arrogance. The leaders of tomorrow!
I would say getting good grades is what brings self-esteem and good feelings not the other way around. That’s not saying feeling good about doing well on a single test will suddenly turn someone into an ace student but it is better for morale than failing.
That’s one of the ways the whole self-esteem industry went wrong. Self-esteem comes from having skills and accomplishments. A lot of kids realize they are being lied to, but sadly it seems that number is declining. When I was in school this stuff was just getting started and pretty much everyone saw through it at some point.
It did have another detrimental effect though: if good students kept being fawned over, the praise became too much and was embarrassing and false. Also, seeing the poor students, particularly the cut ups and bullies with terrible grades getting praised just as profusely was the icing on the cake. It made ALL praise suspect, and this was just before the whole giving awards and ribbons to everyone or none at all. I don’t even think the teachers we had then would have gone for that.
Don’t forget, that chances are that you are a product of the same or similar environment. Eight hours a day for twelve to sixteen years or more at schools which you admit are dominated by socialist progressive teachers. Trying to claim that your own assumptions, perceptions and biases aren’t influenced by that environment is foolishness.
Question everything. Especially those things you accept w/o thought, question or doubt.