Psychology IV: Children's "self-esteem.".

The first three articles appeared in November 2001, p.35 (psychology's preoccupation with self-fulfilment); December 2001, p.31 (its hatred of religion); Jan/Feb 2002, p.35 (its attempt to explain away the need for moral discipline in education).

Editor

One of the most dominant articles of faith pervading the modern curriculum is the notion that children can't achieve and won't succeed unless they have high self-esteem. In parochial and public schools across our nation, in reading and writing, in health class and on the sports field, making students feel good about themselves has become a foundational goal in the modern classroom.

It's not hard to imagine how teachers and parents have come to believe that improving self-esteem is important. The idea of increasing the students' sense of selfworth, of improving their respect and confidence in their own being, certainly has merit. Surely everyone, at some time in life, has been the beaming recipient of a few well-placed words of "encouragement" -- of praise given for a job well done or for a solid effort made. Aren't self-esteem programs just a natural extension of the venerable idea of encouragement, which has always played a central role in good teaching and sound parenting?

Well, not exactly.

The problem with the idea of self-esteem as currently applied in the field of education is the problem of a truth distorted and exaggerated out of all proportion to its proper place in the healthy development of children.

Examples of self-esteem are everywhere. A kindergarten teacher invites youngsters to announce their self-admiration as a part of a course called "I Like Me" ("I like me because of my Blue Jays hat!" "I like me because of my hair!").

One dumbfounded parent reported how her teenage daughter arrived home with a certificate of recognition for future achievement. The girl was being encouraged to feel good about great things she hadn't even done yet.

In addition to continually reminding students how wonderful and important they all are, teachers who want to build their students' self-esteem are expected to carefully avoid the slightest whiff of criticism.

I remember being informed at a workshop for Catholic teachers that we weren't to put 'X's' beside wrong answers on student papers any more, that doing so would damage our students' sense of themselves. From now on, we were told, only positive and encouraging remarks on tests and papers would be allowed. Now that's what I call avoiding the slightest whiff of criticism.

Unlike our older understanding of "encouragement", the self-esteem experts inform us that praise should "not" be linked to performance, since this would raise the possibility of failure, which would only perpetuate low self-esteem. As a consequence, in order to raise students' self-regard, many schools today have been willing to lower standards, make classes easier, inflate grades, and even eliminate the idea of failure.

A big problem, of course, is that this isn't the real world. "In the real world, praise has to be the reward for something worthwhile. Praise must be connected to reality," says Paul Vitz. Confidence without justification can easily become a form of arrogance. The building up of self-esteem unrelated to real accomplishment is very likely to simply make a person over-confident, narcissistic, and unable to work hard. (Certainly little children need loads of encouragement, but as kids reach the age of reason, reality needs to be gradually and charitably introduced.)

From a Catholic point of view, the kind of manipulation advocated by the self-esteem movement plays complete havoc with the spiritual life of the child. Only on the basis of knowing the truth about oneself, along with hope and trust in God, can real progress in the spiritual life take place.

I'll never forget the late Fr. John Hardon's succinct Catholic definition of self-esteem: "A realistic appraisal of one's strengths and weaknesses, and the attributing of one's strengths to God and one's weaknesses to oneself."

It is hardly surprising that thousands of psychological studies have failed to demonstrate that high self-esteem reliably causes anything--at least anything desirable. While many highly successful people suffer from low self-esteem, many others with high self-esteem feel good about themselves simply because they are rich, beautiful, or socially well-connected.

It has been demonstrated that inner-city drug dealers exhibit high self-esteem. That seems natural enough; after all, they have been successful in making a lot of money in a hostile and highly competitive environment.

Contrary to what the theory predicts--that high self-esteem will correlate positively with academic achievement--racial studies show black males have the highest self-esteem, followed by black females, white males, and finally white females. This is the exact opposite of what one would expect if the theory were true.

It also turns out that aggressive and violent men have remarkably high self-esteem, leading at least one researcher to question whether increasing self-esteem might not actually increase violent behaviour.

Which all begs the question: Why have we imposed this superficial understanding of self-esteem on millions of kids and their teachers, if there is no research evidence that it does what it is supposed to do? Why are we using our kids as guinea pigs for the latest fad in educational psychology?

And while we are at it, why aren't the psychologists who think this stuff up ever required to read Aristotle as part of their training? Aristotle understood the unfortunate consequences of taking a good thing too far.

In sum then, the notion of self-esteem is a serious distortion of the proper role of encouragement and praise in the character development of children and is not an idea Christians should have anything to do with.

J. Fraser Field is Executive Officer of the Catholic Educator's Resource Centre (www.catholiceducation.org). He lives in Vancouver, B.C.