Here’s more to ponder regarding how we’re trying to promote self-esteem in our young-uns:
NEW YORK (AP) — Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.
“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”
[snip]
Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.
The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.
Prior related post here.
Added: LA Times version of the story here.
There is a difference in “I’m special” and “I’m better.” There is nothing wrong with thinking that you are special so long as you recognize that other people also have something special about themselves.
Personally, I feel it would be more dangerous if people felt that we are all the same. That reduces us to mere statistics, disposable people in each other’s eyes.
To say that we are all the same equates me with murderers and other violent rift raft in the world. I will always consider myself at least better than them. Sorry.
I don’t have a problem with people (even young skulls full o’ mush who aren’t “college students”) being confident, or assertive, or feeling ‘special’ — however, when you throw “entitled” into the mix, I do have a problem with that. It boils down to the point CLG was trying to make in her post: results aren’t (or shouldn’t be) about what you are, as much as they are about what you do. This may, unfortunately, be the long-term collateral damage of the Civil Rights movement and Affirmative Action – while the intentions were good (redressing long-standing injustice, and levelling the playing field), the unintended consequences (infusing a whole generation with an entitlement mentality) may end up being our undoing.
~EdT.
I see this in my students constantly. They have marvelous self-esteem, for no apparent reason. They make F’s on exams, turn in work that middle schoolers should be ashamed of, yet that self-esteem meter is still on 11. Go figure.
i think this is a mis interpretation of the “self esteem movement” if there ever was such a movement.
when my daughter was in 6th grade (in the 80’s) she had a teacher that was slightly nuts. she told my daughter that my daughter would not be successful and end up pregnant and unmarried. my daughter was annoyed by this and other bizarre statements made by this teacher. my daughter and i discussed it. we both came to the conclusion that her teacher was nuts and my daughter would have to deal with her teacher in her own way.
i did not interfere because i believed this would be a valuable lesson for my daughter. in life you will meet people that do not act the way you want them to. nor do they say what you want them to. so what.
i let my daughter deal with it in her own way. needless to say my parent friends were appalled my my laissez faire approach. however, i stood firm because my role as a parent was to teach my daughter not live her life for her. i believe this helped my daughter with her self esteem..