Wednesday, February 16, 2005

What a shocker

USA Today reports that kids who were educated in the high self esteem, feel good about yourself 1980s, the twentysomething Millenials who are now joining the workforce, are collapsing at the first sign of negative feedback from the real world.

Well, color me shocked.

For 20 years, instead of teaching our children basic skills like how to properly read, write and speak English, how to make change for a dollar, and imparting to them the critical thinking skills needed to solve problems, the American public education system has concerned itself more with making certain that our children are happy. That they should be proud not because they actually achieved something, but because they made any kind of effort at all.

And of course, this high self-esteem, awarded for precisely nothing, turns out in the real world to be worth just that: nothing.

"I often get students in graduate school doing doctorates who made straight A's all their lives, and the first time they get tough feedback, the kind you need to develop skills," says Deborah Stipek, dean of education at Stanford University. "I have a box of Kleenex in my office because they haven't dealt with it before."

Warmest congratulations to the geniuses of Educational Theory who generated this load of horseshit and foisted it on the next greatest generation. It takes hubris to disregard the common sense notions of generations.

What have we learned, class?

Until a student is given a challenge, he won't bother to rise to it.

If a teacher praises everything, a student will settle for anything.

Self-esteem cannot be awarded. It must be earned.

If you can't earn it, you can't own it. If you don't own it, you won't care for it. If you don't care for it, it will be lost or taken away. It does not matter what "it" is - this is a universal truth.

Sweat, pain and frustration are the tools God uses to make you grow up.

Here endeth the lesson. Now go to work.