Posted on 08/13/2007 5:02:18 AM PDT by Caleb1411
MarDay wrote: “These (esteem/positive self image) can’t be given, they must be developed.”
What would happen if you trained a dog by giving it a doggie treat no matter what it did? Bite the postman? Give it a treat. Pee on the carpet? Give it a treat. What kind of dog would it grow up to be?
I’m not implying children are dogs, of course, but there are similarities in how they both develop. Reinforce bad behavior by rewarding it, and you’ll only get more bad behavior.
Yeh Man! And they built a bridge in Minnesota with their --I AM somebody..attitude? ;^)
Yes, except that the way the message is delivered completely undermines it.
I mean, what sense does it make to tell a kid "You're unique, just like every other kid!"...?
bump for later
No, this article is saying that self-esteem is not earned yet is still given. There is nothing wrong with self-esteem as long as it is earned through hard work and respect.
“I mean, what sense does it make to tell a kid “You’re unique, just like every other kid!”...?”
LOL!
And yet, it’s true isn’t it?
The example I usually see given is the example if snowflakes.
So...EVERY snowflake is “unique” just like every other snowflake, but every snowflake has its own design.
What’s wrong is the ego-stroking grade inflation of the low-performing students. Since we can’t have anyone fail, the F student now gets a D, C, B (or whatever) and the liberal mind, knowing that this cuts into the true-achievers’ status must now elevate his grade to something akin to ‘A++’.
We have done away with all rational standards and entered the delusional state of Lake Wobegon—where all the men are strong, all the women are good-looking and all the children are above average...or are all the women strong and the men good-looking???...or wait, it’s the children are smart, the women are strong and good-looking and the men are gone. That’s it.
Now THAT makes sense. I'm sitting here thinking of every person I've ever known or come across who has preyed on other people - either by stealing from them or physically harming them. Every single one of them held themselves in higher esteem than the people they were hurting. In certain cases, they may have had low esteem around other people in other situations. But they definitely considered themselves better, smarter, stronger, and more entitled to things than the people they hurt.
I like to point out that many liberal failures are due to their confusion regarding "cause" and "effect".
Valuable "self-esteem" is the effect of accomplishment and, as such, reinforces the behavior of accomplishing.
Schools should be concentrating on having every student accomplish something valuable, not on directly instilling "self-esteem" regardless of accomplishment. Such false "self-esteem" is not only worthless, it is counter-productive.
Liberals exhibit similar confusion regarding "wealth". True wealth involves the ability to gather rewards by competitively contributing to society's needs and adopting a life-style which is consistent with that ability.
Liberals believe that "wealth" is money. So they tax people and give money away to people who are not wealthy, attempting to bring wealth to them. It's an abject failure wherever tried. The War on Poverty isn't even mentioned anymore. It was lost long ago, but the taxes and re-distribution of money continues.
Gun control is another area where liberals fail miserably to detect the difference between "cause" and "effect".
Only recently have there been reported studies showing that NO gun control law can be demonstrated to decrease crime, which is the claimed "effect" desired by the liberals. Instead, liberals continue to enforce needless burdens on the law-abiding, making the lawful ownership and use of firearms more difficult.
Actually a lot of the Anglicans who believe(d) in God aren’t Anglicans any more: myself, my current parish priest (the senior priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese—he got out early, seeing the writing on the wall when PECUSA wouldn’t depose Bishop Pike for heresy when he denied the Holy Trinity—the founding priest of our little mission and its mother parish, now the Provost of St. Vladimir’s seminary, . . . Indeed our Bishop, Bp. BASIL (Essy) of Wichita and Mid-America, once scandalized the Anglicans by thanking Nashotah House for sending him so many fine priests (at the time, I think about 2/3 of the priests of what has become the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America were converts, and a majority of those from Anglicanism).
The Antiochian Archdiocese has even authorized a Divine Liturgy based on the BCP—the Divine Litgurgy of St. Tikhon, so named because it contains the corrections to the BCP Eucharistic order that the Holy Synod of Moscow proposed would be necessary if the BCP order were ever to be used in Orthodox worship. The question was posed at a time when reunion was the thought in mind, but the Holy Synod’s work turned out to be useful at a later time for a different purpose.
Fascinating! I was thinking of the Anglican churches in Africa and Asia. It seems that in the fairly near future, these bodies and their missions in Europe and America will be detached from the historic center of Anglicanism, while preserving much of what is positive about that tradition.
Although I’m sure there are significant differences, this reminded me of the situation of Orthodox churches in Africa and India, which maintain very old and distinctive traditions.
Marxists! This is the word that fits.
Our government schools are run by Marxists and their useful idiots ( those who call themselves “liberals”)
Our government schools are the biggest threat to our nation than any other single issue ! We can survive Islamofascism. We can survive a oil crisis. We have proven that we can survive a Depression.
We can NOT survive the Marxism that is being preached day after day to the next generation of voters.
Solution: All those who love our nation and its experiment in self rule should remove their children from government schools. They should then organize with other parents to elect representatives who will close government schools DOWN! Then we should turn our attention to our colleges and universities and reform these cesspools of Marxism as well.
One of the great lessons of Christianity
And you don't have to be a gang member or crime boss to feel that way - we see it right here on FR, among nominal "Christians" when they discuss Muslims and the relative merits of nuking Mecca.
Does your hatred of religion infect every discussion you take part in? It's off topic here and adds nothing to the discussion. Please give it a rest. This is a discussion about education.
A very wise 10 year old of my acquaintance recognized the fallacy of that the other day. He said "If everyone is special, then no one is special"
Of course when I was growing up the only "special" kids in school rode the short buses.
“There has been a movement against ‘criticizing’ children too much…One popular method tells teachers not to correct students’ spelling or grammar, arguing that kids should be ‘independent spellers’ so they can be treated as ‘individuals.’”
A while back, when my brother was in grade school we had this nonsense. They called it “magic spelling”. Also, there were many homework projects that involved the entire family. One night, his math homework had questions in it like, “How did you feel about that concept?” He was supposed to be doing math, not talking about how math makes him feel!
There were many expensive and time consuming extra projects. I was so happy my children didn’t have to do this. Grades in our district got so low, that the state took over and forced them to really educate the kids, and these ridiculous excuses for education stopped. They had to focus on test results to regain local control of the school district.
I hate all this touchy-feely junk in our schools.
Too much self-esteem makes some people feel like the world owes them everything, and they are better than everyone else, or above the law.
I guess that depends on how you define “special”.
It isn’t false that everyone is “unique”.
As a christian we were always taught that everyone is “special” in God’s eyes.
However, when they refer to “self esteem”, I think it goes hand in hand with “self respect”.
And that is something that is earned.
Everyone knows instinctively whether they have worked their hardest or not. Whether they earned something, or didn’t. Whether they did something good, or something bad.
We were able to recognize when other people excelled at something.
I think this is what is being eaten away by this movement.
When competition is eliminated - when excellence is downplayed and mediocrity is inflated, then the kids get a twisted view of what they’ve really accomplished.
They’ve taken an idea that is partially true, and perverted it into a philosophy that prevents kids from excelling.
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