
American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem - zupancik
https://www.1843magazine.com/dispatches/the-daily/american-children-are-drowning-in-selfesteem
======
NTDF9
What I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of
speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation.

I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band.

In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what
he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep
saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going guys" etc.

While this feedback raises self-esteem with positive feedback, there is no
criticism of where they failed...at all!! Who's going to tell them, "Hey, your
timing on the G-C chord switch sucked"?

When these same kids go for a "real" performance/audition, they suck at it,
fail miserably and thus causing anti-social behaviors, anger, and in extreme
cases, suicides.

I personally believe in a system of constructive criticism where positive
feedback is necessary for the kids, yet someone actually tells them that they
can do better in this, this and this area.

Irrationally high/low self-esteem is a bane for competition.

~~~
skywhopper
There's a time and a place for critique, and immediately after a performance
is neither. Only a jerk with truly low self-esteem would think that it was
appropriate to offer unsolicited criticicism of the performance skills of a
teenager in a rock band to their face at the performance.

If it's their music instructor, maybe. But again, that's not really the place.
Next lesson would be the right time and place to get that feedback.

~~~
charlesdm
Are you an American? I'm European, and maybe this is just personal experience
/ a personal anecdote, but whenever I've had conversations with an American I
found that they tend to always be really excited and then casually ignore any
further communication. It's much harder to figure out for me what an American
_actually_ means vs say a Belgian or a British person. No point in being an
open person if you're only touting positive things.

I agree with your statement in principle, but at the same time, people need to
be willing to give some meaningful comments. If I'm trying to break through in
a rock band, I want criticism so I can figure out how to improve. Being told
"Good performance brah", if you know you sucked, sucks.

~~~
mgalka
What country are you from? In my experience Americas fall somewhere in the
middle in terms of directness, compared to European countries.

I lived in the UK for a few years and found Brits very hard to read /
resistant to confrontation. On the other hand, I'm married to a Spaniard, and
when I'm over there, it's sometimes a bit uncomfortable how direct and open
people are.

~~~
charlesdm
Belgium. It's not necessarily the directness that I mind, it's the fact that
often people are (excuse my language) full of shit. They say A, but actually
mean B. Which is a trait, for example, the British have as well, but one I
seem to understand a lot better than when I'm dealing with Americans.

~~~
DavidAdams
Americans have a reputation for saying things like "let's do lunch sometime"
as a sort of vague statement of agreeableness and intention to stay in
contact, whereas, let's say, Swedish people would consider that to be a
straightforward intention to book a lunch date.

~~~
kasey_junk
> Swedish people would consider that to be a straightforward intention to book
> a lunch date

I don't know Swedish from Martian, but I'm surprised the language doesn't have
"pleasantries". They seem near universal.

I know that I (as an American) have had uncomfortable experiences with
translated Chinese for instance, assuming someone was asking impertinent
questions when it was really just them being polite.

~~~
m_mueller
I'm Swiss and I think it's kind of the same thing. Don't look there for
pleasantries. Hey Buddy! Hmm why iz zhat strange person calling me a 'Buddy',
I don't even know him!

I think most germanic languages are just much more focused on information
content. On the other hand I can get into deep discussions with strangers,
even disagreeing with each other, but not get emotional in any way, actually
even enjoying the exchange. With Americans I feel there's a mountain of
smalltalk and pleasantries to conquer until you can start being sincere.
However that might also just me not understanding the culture enough to do
that correctly.

------
artpepper
The author seems to be attacking common core ("so many different ways to think
about simple addition") but then links it to self-esteem, without actually
showing the connection. How does he know the math curriculum was designed to
boost self-esteem?

Also, the ability to do rote sums is not the same as understanding math. So
the fact that his son "could add up already" doesn't mean much, at least out
of context.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
How math curriculum boost self-esteem? You mean like being able to calculate
precise predictions of any model of any discipline? In what way do you think
that can possibly influence the self-confidence of anyone?

------
sp332
If self-esteem is so high, why is suicide so common?

Giving someone self-esteem doesn't mean letting them whine all the time. Your
swimming instructors saying “C’mon dude, stop complaining, let’s get on with
it!” IS giving the kid self-esteem!

Teaching many ways to add is important because not all kids are going to be
able to learn the same way at that age. Different methods are going to "click"
for different students. And those extra ways of adding aren't useless. In fact
I spent a fair bit of time in college math and computer courses learning new
ways to count, let alone add.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The argument I've heard is that children are not learning how to deal with
failure or criticism early enough to develop a basic toolkit for it.

~~~
6stringmerc
If you need this codified in the modern US media cycle, just take a look at
the Corey Feldman / Today Show situation. He was terrible on appearance #1,
the internet let him know (as it does, both in tempered and vicious ways) and
he claimed he was being bullied, then came back and did appearance #2 which
was even musically worse than the first one. Then he thanks everybody for the
support, rather than pay attention to the valid criticism that he has not made
a bit of improvement since his Howard Stern performance in 1992.

Calling a terrible work product terrible isn't bullying.

~~~
r00fus
I think kid celebrities live in their own bubble and not representative of the
larger population of children.

~~~
6stringmerc
The man is 45 years old now. He's not a child anymore so it's reasonable to
stop treating him with child gloves, or, to the point, coddling his self-
esteem.

------
6stringmerc
> _At the heart of the problem is an educational ethos that prizes building
> self-esteem over academic attainment._

I'm not going to argue this assertion, because I think it's a valid one, but I
would like to give it context that the author is seemingly lacking:

As a generalization spanning several decades, parents aren't interested in
being parents and in turn the provenance of their responsibilities at home -
discipline, ethics, morals, codes of conduct - have been transitioned to that
of either the School System or LEOs in more extreme cases.

I submit it's nearly impossible to be both an academic task-master and an
emotional development coach at the same time and expect both of them to excel
in all scenarios where the provider is a Civic Organization of some sort (e.g.
school system).

After all, it's a bunch of adults promoting the self-esteem bandwagon for
these past few decades, not the kids. I wholly encourage Mr. Astill to join
his local PTA and begin to address his long-term concerns with the root of the
problem. I say this rather tongue in cheek, because actually doing something
about the issue in one's one neighborhood is a _lot_ harder than sitting down
and writing about it (as a writer, believe me I know).

~~~
zanny
This touches on something nobody wants to acutally acknowledge or talk about.
There is some subconscious shifts taking place - marriage later or not at all,
fewer kids per household, etc - but fundamentally raising children is a _ton_
of work. It is its own job, possibly in a class of its own in difficulty or at
least rivaled by almost any other profession.

But society and culture just expects the job of you. Do it, don't be trained
to do it, and probably worse of all do not organize society around promoting
those who are best at it. In any other disciple if you are amazing at it you
should expect gainful employment carrying it out. And there is a dramatic
difference between _parenting_ and _caretaking_ or _teaching_. And even those
have really bad real world metrics to gauge success, given by how often
sitters or teachers can perform poorly.

But you don't solve this problem when you shove down every adults throat how
not having children means they are a failure as a person, combined with the
expectation that they should both be good parents _and_ have an independent
second (or first) career.

Being a parent is its own job. Throughout history, humans have consistently
dedicated tremendous amounts of absolute hours of its adult population to the
raising of children. Societies often organized around the subjugation of an
entire sex to do the job. It is crucial for the wellbeing and long term
prosperity of current and future generations people accept that reality.

------
alex-
> American children came top at thinking they were good at maths, but bottom
> at maths. For Korean children, the inverse was true: they considered
> themselves poorer at maths than the children of any other country, but were
> the best.

This really stood out to me because I often found my own examination results
puzzling. I would ace exams that I thought I failed and just pass ones I was
sure I had done well in.

This has lead me to believe that the more I know about a subject, the more I
know how little I actually know about it and the greater respect I have for
subject as a whole.

This might explain why children who are not great at maths might think they
are. Not due to an inflated self esteem but because "knowing what you don't
know" is a part of the learning process.

~~~
Jenya_
I like to have short names for similar things which are described by different
people, in this case the name is likely to be Dunning–Kruger effect
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

~~~
alex-
Thank you!

~~~
hexane360
Which is almost the opposite of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

------
jconley
Interesting anecdote. As a father I feel nearly the exact opposite so I'll
share my opinion.

On academics, I want my kids to learn how to learn. And to love to learn. I
want them to learn to be persistent, have mental fortitude, be formidable,
take risks, be collaborative, and not be afraid to fail. They should learn to
be productive in whatever aspect of society they end up in. I want them to be
happy. Lives are short. Childhoods are shorter. Striving to be the best at
math and science academically gets a "meh" sort of reaction from me.

Yes we need those skills, and raw academic achievement is an interesting
measurement, but, I'd like to see some convincing stats that it holds a causal
relationship to national productivity per capita and GDP. I'm guessing that
would be the goal of an education, in terms of the economy.

------
agentgt
It is ironic the author uses a swimming metaphor:

 _" If their instructors had focused on making them feel good about swimming,
instead of on making them swim, they could have drowned."_

Swimming is almost natural. Most mammals can swim with out training (even my
cat knew how to swim). Fear on the other hand is what leads to drowning. You
don't need formal training in swimming to stay a float. You need to not be
afraid of the water.

On personal level for the downvoters as to why this is such a crappy metaphor
is I know several adult family members that do not know how to swim and one of
them my wife and just trained recently.... it required lots and lots of
confidence boosting and reassuring.

So the instructor actually does need to make them "feel good" aka comfortable
with the water.

The author could have picked so many other metaphors where state of mind plays
less of a role.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's nonsense. As a kid I was not afraid of water. I could dive 10 meters
down without fear. But I still couldn't swim without instruction.

~~~
agentgt
Maybe so. But the author says _" drown"_ not swim. I presume you knew how to
float if you weren't afraid of the water?

I have seen adults that refuse to take lessons because... because... they are
afraid.

So regardless I still say it is pretty crappy metaphor.

~~~
maxxxxx
I didn't know how to float either.

~~~
civilian
You're an N of 1. When I was learning to swim I remember a lot of kids bawling
their eyes out when first going into the pool.

------
jseliger
We actually want more self-efficacy: [http://seliger.com/2008/05/01/self-
efficacy%E2%80%94oops-the...](http://seliger.com/2008/05/01/self-
efficacy%E2%80%94oops-there-goes-another-rubber-tree-plant/) rather than self-
esteem. Which is a topic that's been bandied about in the media for a while
yet hasn't really taken hold.

~~~
danbolt
I really like the idea of this concept, as it helps guide people to understand
what's important to them. Having a grounding sense of goals, principles, and
boundaries enables people to cultivate a productive self-worth that can be
very powerful.

I feel like a lot of Hacker News readers can probably relate to this, as I've
sensed a lot of self-directed joy has come from their time spent learning and
using computers.

Looking back, other people's people evaluating/encouraging/criticising my math
skills, swimming abilities, or self-esteem has done much worse for me than
individually realising what's important to myself and wanting to work towards
that. I really hope that we culturally have a change in attitude towards these
things.

------
cwyers
The grading scale at my daughter's elementary school keeps moving more and
more towards not having any sort of discernable outcomes. The possible grade
as of her most recent report card are:

Basic skill Progressing towards goal Meets goal Exceeds goal

And in several subjects (it grows every semester), Es are not awarded at all.
I am not sure I understand the point of this system.

~~~
zhemao
Because it's not meant to rank children against each other. It's meant to tell
the parents and students how they are doing compared to the standard. If they
have not met the goal, then something needs to change. If they have met the
goal or exceeded it, there's not much to worry about.

It's not like kids really learn much in elementary school anyways. Which is
itself a problem, but a different one.

------
a-no-n
"Self-esteem" is a nice way of saying American children are becoming more
arrogant with fewer skill, lower performance and less experience than ever.
Adults, teachers and mentors need to do more to put them in their place, for
their own good. Respect is earned, not entitled to "special snowflakes."

------
jupiter90000
While they didn't turn out to learn much in math, they did learn how to sit
still at a desk, which is perfect preparation for a later office job. At least
the parents got a break and someone else to take care of their kids for a few
hours each day.

------
sebastianconcpt
"...the country’s elementary schools seem strangely averse to teaching
children much stuff" <\- If you really really want to understand why this
happens, you should investigate the subject: "Cultural War"

------
Animats
The article mentions that too much effort is going into teaching arithmetic by
different means. Is that really necessary? Once kids get addition,
subtraction, and multiplication as useful operations, and know what division
is for, that kind of covers it. (Long division by hand is such a clunky
operation, and done so much better by calculators, it may not be worth
teaching any more.)

 _" I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special"_ \- Jane Lane, in
_Daria_.

~~~
rimantas
Long division was probably the first algorithm I've learned. If you don't
think that learning how to manipulate abstractions by applying algorithms is a
usefull thing… well why not just skip arithmetics too, calculators are good
with this one.

~~~
Animats
I had a mechanical calculator of the hand-crank, moving carriage type to play
with as a kid. This gives an insight into how multiplication and division
really work.

There's a carriage with two rows of numbers, a full keyboard (10 keys per
column), a hand crank, and a second crank which moves the carriage sideways
one notch. Moving the carriage is a shift by a power of 10.

To multiply, you clear everything, then punch one number into the keyboard.
The buttons lock down and stay down. When you turn the crank one turn, the
number in the keyboard is added to the upper row on the carriage, and the
lower row has 1 added. So to multiply 25 x 25, you punch 25 into the keyboard.
Turn the crank once, and you have 25 in the upper row and 1 in the lower row.
Turn the crank five times, and you have 125 in the upper row and 5 in the
lower row. Then shift the carriage one notch right. Turn the crank once, and
you add 250 to the upper row, and 10 to the lower row. One more crank turn,
and you have 25 x 25 = 650 in the upper row, and 25 in the lower row. This
makes it very clear that multiplication is repeated addition with shifting.

Division is repeated subtraction. You clear everything and enter the dividend.
Turn the crank once to add the dividend to the top row on the carriage. Then
clear the keyboard, clear the lower row, and shift to division mode. In
division mode, turning the crank _subtracts_ from the top row while adding 1
to the bottom row. Now enter the divisor in the keyboard. Move the carriage so
that the high digit of the divisor and the high digit of the dividend line up.
Turn the crank. This subtracts the shifted divisor from the dividend and adds
1 to the quotient. If the dividend goes negative, a bell rings and 9999
appears at the left end of the top row, indicating you subtracted too much and
went negative. That's OK; just turn the crank one turn backwards, the leading
999.. changes to 000 and the bell rings again. You now have one digit of
quotient. Shift the carriage left one row and repeat. Each shift gives one
more digit of quotient. When the carriage is back to the full left position,
the lower row is the quotient and the upper row is the remainder. This makes
it very clear that division is repeated subtraction with shifting.

This is clearer than manual long division, with all that trial divisor and
guessing stuff. It reflects the basic fact that division really is just
repeated subtraction with counting.

------
zhemao
It doesn't seem like this is a problem with self-esteem. The problem is that
American schools don't have good educational standards or trained teachers. In
the countries that rank ahead of us in the international assessments, even
elementary school teachers need to have education degrees. That is not the
case in most American school districts (just need a teaching certificate).
Teaching is also a more highly respected profession in other countries.

It's pretty much expected in the US that kids don't really learn much of
anything in school until they get to 8th grade. I certainly think we could
introduce more advanced math concepts at earlier grades instead of taking five
years to cover basic arithmetic.

That's not to say that I would like us to adopt a system like that of China or
South Korea, in which students are drilled from morning to night on mostly
rote tasks and then pitted against each other in a gladiatorial competition
called the National College Entrance Examination. If there was a better way of
squashing children's natural curiosity and love of learning, I can't really
envision it.

~~~
WallWextra
1\. I don't know what education degrees look like in other countries, but I
highly doubt more education majors in the US would solve anything without
first overhauling that curriculum and making it more demanding.

2\. Is there any factual evidence for this often-repeated stereotype about
Asian children having less curiosity and love of learning than American ones?

~~~
zhemao
1\. I'm sure they are more rigorous than the education major in the US, which
is pretty much a joke. I agree that the way we train teachers has to be
revamped.

2\. I never said that Asian students are less curious. From interacting with
Chinese and South Korean classmates, they are just as intellectually curious
as their American peers. I just don't think the East Asian model of education
is very good at fostering individual engagement and understanding. It's
heavily focused on rote memorization and is definitely "teach to the test". I
would welcome a study on it with a good analysis. Don't really known how you
would measure it though. South Korea also has the highest suicide rates in the
developed world, and much of it is concentrated in those under 18. So there
are plenty of reasons why we would not want to adopt it here.

------
lukeasrodgers
The author states "Nor is [poor education performance in America] due to high
levels of inequality: the proportion of American children coming from under-
privileged backgrounds is about par for the OECD."

I'd be interested to see a citation for this claim; I think it's either
misleading, or things have changed a lot over the last 5-8 years (which I
doubt). What I recall from my time working in education research, looking at
the international tests including PISA, is that average scores from the USA
are brought down by the fact that the bottom-performing kids do so much worse
than elsewhere, which if you look at the way public school funding works in
America, makes a lot of sense (i.e. wealthy district = higher taxes = more
funding for public education).

The problem isn't that America has _more_ low-SES students than other places,
it's that we (speaking as someone currently living in America) do a worse job
educating them. I'm not saying that the problem is _only_ inequality, but it
is definitely part of the picture.

------
gsg21
There's a great book called "The Collapse of Parenting" [1] that talks about
this. It obviously expands on these ideas, but here are a few notes: \- Many
parents confuse self-esteem with courage \- To be courageous means to
recognize the risks and your own limitations, but you find the resolve to move
forward anyway. Bloated self-esteem means you aren't aware of your
deficiencies \- The right kind of humility means you recognize your own
shortcomings and you are better prepared to take risks

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-
Grown-U...](https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-Grown-
Ups/dp/0465048978)

------
woodentable
Of course, the idea of children with low self esteem has been rising in
correlation of increased usage of social media. I would add that the rates of
anxiety are also related the high usage rate of social media users.

------
mkempe
To grok self-esteem, one must grasp eudaemonia.

Self-esteem is reliance on your own power to think, judge, and act; regardless
of what others may feel, say, or threaten. If some snowflakes cannot stand
being judged by others, or cannot judge themselves, they do not have self-
esteem.

As for post-modern "teachers" who believe that unfounded praise, unrelated to
achievement, is the source of self-esteem -- they are nurturing lemmings,
alienated from their true human potential.

------
smegel
This isn't self-esteem. It's the foundation of narcissistic personality
disorder.

Self-esteem is simply the belief that one can be loved and respected for who
they are.

Needing to "achieve" (or believe that achievements are worthwhile) in order to
feel good about ones self is the opposite to self-esteem.

~~~
nemo44x
I mainly agree but I believe the narcissism is in the parents more than the
children. It is then passed on to the children.

No one wants to just admit their kid is pretty average or below average at
certain things. They believe they have failed themselves and that there is no
way that their offspring could just be a regular person.

Of course it has become harder to be a regular person and have a fine life in
modern, Western society. We don't have the regular person jobs anymore that a
regular person who is pretty average can take up like they could generations
ago.

The stakes are high and a smaller and smaller group of high achievers, or what
appear to be high achievers get all the spoils. A parent has an instinct to
make every effort to guide their offspring to that to the point you get
average kids who honestly believe they are well above average. It has been
reenforced.

------
rdabane
I can attest to this fact ... I was a tutor to freshmans during my grad
studies. The kids couldn't handle simple sum of fractions without a
calculator. Forget about sum fractions containing a variable. I was astonished
at how they managed to clear the SAT's.

------
smsm42
That self-esteem thing reminds me of this: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?id=3978](http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3978)

------
nick_
Is it just me, or did seemingly every columnist switch from using "math" to
"maths" in the past few years?

~~~
aembleton
This particular commentator is from the UK. Here, in the UK we say "maths".

------
petegrif
IMHO it's an issue.

------
dmolony
I blame L'Oreal for this. "Because you're worth it."

