The Processes are opinion pieces where the author explains how they used information to reach their conclusion.
A quick side bar before i begin: my tattered old Merriam-Webster dictionary has been getting quite a lot of use as of late in these posts! It really does make me sad to think that these relics of the past will probably never be used again in another hundred years or so, though. I wonder how many adults, much less public school students, have used a physical dictionary outside of an academic setting in the past year? Most people will just type the word into Google these days, anyhow. Who am i kidding? It’s so much easier to ask Siri what something means!
Anyhow, back to the topic on hand. It’s been a couple of generations since Nathaniel Brandon wrote his essay entitled "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" which suggested that "feelings of self-esteem were the key to success in life". Since then, several dozen groups were formed in order to aid in the development of the self-esteem of children, all with various agendas, but most shared three goals:
1 - Minimize early life poverty by reducing teenage pregnancy
2 - Encouraging the artistic qualities of children and allowing their emotions to be expressed
3 - Focus less on a punishment and reward system and more on a reward by effort system
Many of these ideas came from Humanist Psychologist Carl Rogers, who held the belief that:
Every human being, with no exception, for the mere fact to be it, is worthy of unconditional respect of everybody else; he deserves to esteem himself and to be esteemed.
Rogers also theorized the origin of many people's problems to be that they despise themselves and consider themselves worthless and incapable of being loved. This is why Rogers believed in the importance of giving unconditional acceptance to a client and when this was done it could improve the client's self-esteem. It was following this rationale that led to the establishment of the California-based Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility in 1986. The purpose of this group was to study the importance of self-esteem in the lives of young people and determine what changes needed to be made in public education to encourage a better sense of self among children. Despite the fact that this committee found very small associations between low self-esteem and its assumed consequences, ultimately showing that low self-esteem is not the root of all societal problems and not as important as the committee had originally thought, many of the policies people love to mock, such as “every kid gets a trophy” and “kinder, gentler Army” were still created from the successor of this committee, the National Association for Self Esteem.
According to Merriam-Webster, Esteem is defined as “to regard with respect”. If you throw Self in front of that, then the definition becomes “to regard yourself with respect”. This is a fine thing to do, and the people in these committee’s were doing what they thought were right with the best of intentions. However, with all of the “Everyone’s a Winner” games and “Everyone’s Special” gospel, it may be safe to say that the modern tooter’s of the Self-Esteem movement are using a different definition entirely: “self-worship”. Instead of creating a society of young people who feel good about themselves and want to make others feel good, we just created a culture of young Narcissists. And, little known fact, Sociopaths think very HIGHLY of themselves already, and since Psychology Today claims that 6.2% of people would likely display Narcistic Personality Traits, that would mean that we’ve helped the 5,069,100 Sociopaths in my generation alone become better at becoming conceited. No wonder we can’t take criticism, can’t listen to an opposing viewpoint, and don’t understand why others don’t value our opinions!
I offer a solution. It may be seen as cruel, but it may be essential at this juncture. Instead of the “everyone get’s a trophy”, “everyone’s special”, and “do your best”, replace these pillars with the following:
1 - Whoever does the best gets the trophy; you lost because you weren’t the best
2 - Only those who make themselves special are special. Everyone else is ordinary, and that’s okay. Someone has to be the baseline.
3 - “Bobby, if you don’t get that damn Math grade up to an A this semester, I’ll make you wish that the sperm did a backstroke before it hit that egg!!!”
