Posted on 12/11/2012 6:03:06 AM PST by shortstop
The chickens have come home to roost.
The first generation of students swaddled in the insanity of the self-esteem movement have emerged on the scene as arrogant, self-absorbed twits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and self-importance.
In short, they’ve been spoiled. Potentially, they’ve been ruined.
The idiocy of social engineering in the classroom is again bearing catastrophic results.
Here’s how we know. A group of five university professors has evaluated more than 16,000 personality profiles of college students gathered over the last 24 years. What they’ve discovered is that today’s young people have dramatically different self-concepts than the two generations which preceded them.
And the differences aren’t good.
Today’s college students are monumentally more narcissistic. That means they worship themselves. That means they’ve been told that they’re special so many times that they’ve come to believe it. In blunt terms, they think their crap doesn’t stink.
But it does. Possibly more than most.
Because one of the hallmarks of an inflated self-concept is personal failure. People who think they are superior have an uncanny tendency to be inferior. Their sense of worth is so high they have no motivation to work and improve themselves. When you think the world is yours on a silver platter, it never occurs to you that you’ve got to get off your backside and earn anything.
The study shows that children born after 1982 have a unrealistically inflated self-concepts. So high is their estimation of themselves, in fact, that they are fully narcissistic – a trait that is somewhere in the gray area between a character flaw and a personality disorder. Narcissism is such an unhealthy aberration that it is almost a mental illness.
And the self-esteem movement of the 1990s has made it epidemic.
Unfortunately, the education industry has become so divorced from reality that for several years the conventional wisdom in American classrooms has been that children – particularly poor and minority children – fail to achieve because they have negative self-concepts. The way to correct that, the argument has gone, is to pump up their self-concepts through self-esteem building. That typically translated to unrealistic and unearned praise for students, and the removal of all negative feedback and consequences from the classroom. That’s why grades are artificially high, everybody gets a smiley face and teachers don’t use red ink any more.
Schools seem incapable of recognizing that true self-worth comes from doing what’s right and from legitimate achievement. Not praise passed out like candy, but genuine achievement coming as the consequence of significant effort. You earn worth, it isn’t given out for free.
The lunacy of the education reformers was matched by the leniency of the troubled homes. Mom and dad have forgotten how to be mom and dad. Children were waited on hand and foot with no obligations of their own to work or assist the family. Permissive parenting and failed educating led to a bumper crop of egocentric creeps.
And that’s going to hurt.
Because narcissists typically fail. They fail in their responsibility to be good citizens and they fail in their responsibility to be good spouses and parents.
Being a good citizen and being part of a family requires selflessness. They require putting your own interests second to the interests of something larger and more important than yourself. To the narcissist, there is nothing more important than yourself.
That leads to employment and self-reliance difficulties, and to significant challenges to the ability to maintain a marriage and raise a family.
Which bites society hard. Society needs this crop of young adults – like every crop of young adults – to assume its responsibilities as the taxpayers and the parents of the future. Each rising tide needs to shoulder its burdens and leave its mark. Failure to do that can have huge sociological consequences.
This crop has been weakened in its abilities to bear off those responsibilities by the warped worldview its education and upbringing gave it.
So what can be done?
The self-esteem crap can end. Though it is so entrenched and unquestioned, and protected by political correctness, that it is unlikely to go anywhere.
Young people must learn – with the help of others – that the world doesn’t revolve around them, and that believing it does is the quickest way to a miserable and disappointing life.
The social and religious values of the United States – and of decent nations all around the world – teach selflessness and service. Those values must be re-enthroned and the self-worship of the narcissism-breeding self-esteem movement must end.
I’ve often thought the rise in school shootings is largely due to the fake self esteem movement. These kids can’t handle stress or disappointment and we’ve basically raised a generation of sociopaths
Turning OFF the TV would be a good place to start.... lots of negative and unwholesome ideas streaming into your household, there!
They’d have a hard time outdoing the Boomers, the kings of narcissism. At any rate, this generation is like any generation, you have your good and bad ones. The narcissism he speaks of is much, much less here in the midwest. I work with alot of good, responsible young kids who are just as good stock as anyone.
“arrogant, self-absorbed twits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and self-importance.”
This sounds like a pithy description of POTUS!
Educators--as a group--are the stupidest people on the planet. My wife was a teacher, and a darn good one, but those are few and far between.
On the other hand, the people in the 22-30 age group who are working hard are doing fantastically well. There’s very little competition.
At least the Boomers have something they can legitimately claim--our economy exploded with them working. These kids can only claim more gov't handouts.
Almost spell a word right on a test? Get a passing grade and an “attaboy” from the teacher.
Go 0-10 during the football season? Get a trophy exactly the same as those received by the champions of the league.
Lie and demagogue anyone who does not agree with your perverted Marxist-loving political and world view? Become pResident of the United States. Behold the libtard nation... an entire generation of arrogant ignoramuses, convinced of their "brilliance" and "ability" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And now, apparently, old enough to vote for the poster boy of narcissism...
“Failure to do that can have huge sociological consequences.”
I really hate this. We’re concerned about the problems of society, not the problems of sociologists.
I’ve often attributed my youth obesity to my conservatism and successes. I had very few friends, spent most of my time reading and studying, and even through college, I spent my life giving my time to charities, volunteering, and generally living a life of service. I received praise for my hard work instead of being praised for doing nothing. I worked for everything I had, and I still have a lot of it because I take care of my things.
I remember when I was 10, in 1990, they were starting this “Positive Actions” program in my elementary school. They focused on us praising our peers, focusing on positives, never putting down anyone or anything. I could tell my 5th grade teachers, both in their 50s, didn’t believe a bit of the garbage they were required to shovel, but the kids ate it up. I asked my language teacher why we didn’t “do our words” (vocabulary) anymore and why we spent so little time on reading, and she said if I wanted to spend more time doing that, I could stay after school. Even in elementary school, I would stay for an hour or more after school to work with my teachers on learning.
I find now, as an adult, that children are starved for education. They are literally bored in school! My 10 year old cousin is listless and seems to be vacant of anything resembling intellect. I ask him what he learns in school, and he just tells me nothing important. When I work on my uncle’s computer or try to fix some electronics around their house, that kid is glued to my hip. He’s vibrant and wants to learn. That tells me that schools, anymore, are just daycares for these kids. They’re not teaching them squat, and that’s disgusting.
true self-worth comes from doing what’s right and from legitimate achievement. Not praise passed out like candy, but genuine achievement coming as the consequence of significant effort. You earn worth, it isn’t given out for free.Granted, it's more an objective than a plan for action, but you've got to have agreement on the former before you can do the latter, anyway.
Obviously you’ve forgotten the 70’s. The Boomers started working when they finally realized that money was cool and smokin’ doobie and banging Moon Unit Star Child didn’t pay the rent. Then like all things they went to the extreme and overdid it.
I've got no problem with that, to a point. That is, for very young kids, it's better to focus on effort and participation rather than worrying about records and statistics (although, by, say, age 7, the kids are well aware of who's winning and losing, despite no official scoring). But at least in my neck of the woods, that goes away at age 9 or so (at least for baseball and soccer, which are what my eldest focuses on). Then, scores and standings are kept, only the top teams make the playoffs, and there are winners and losers.
Teach him well my friend, it might be the only education he gets.
I love these kids today. There are plenty of good ones to go with the bad ones, you just have to get away from the coasts and the urban centers to see it.
Not all Boomers were hippies.
“People who think they are superior have an uncanny tendency to be inferior.”
The line of wisdom from this article.
Pair it with another great line “success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” and you understand the problem.
People that are concerned about their abilities work harder.
I haven’t had TV since 2006!
Its such an eerie feeling when I’m watching raw, unfiltered TV, complete with commercials. Very foreign.
Yes, there is hope. I am 29.
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