
The great self-esteem con - oska
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/03/quasi-religious-great-self-esteem-con
======
eludwig
Some comments after reading the article and the thread as it stands.

My kids are in their early thirties now and grew up right in the middle of the
"self-esteem" boom. We jokingly called the grade school they attended "self-
esteem central" and this was back in the late 80s, so we (as parents) were
very aware of what was happening at the time.

I think we knew even then that not everything about it felt quite right. My
feeling around the absurdity of the 35 trophies for "trying real hard" at the
time was that it diminished the very real accomplishment that actually winning
something (for real) entailed. AND, the kids were never fooled. They knew
exactly who had really won (as others in the thread have mentioned). So like
all of these "reactionary" movements (as defined by a sharp deviation from
what came before) they tend to pull too far in the other direction.

Most important for me though is the feeling that the movement had the basic
idea perfectly right! I think it is hard for non-parents to understand the
feeling of helplessness that a parent feels when they send their kids into the
mad hopper of public school. You have raised and loved this little being for 5
or so years and now you are sending them to a place where you can mostly only
hope that they will not be treated poorly (berated, insulted, hurt
physically). So if the self-esteem movement did anything, maybe it raised the
bar for the reasonable treatment of kids as fallible human beings that respond
better to the carrot than the stick? I think it feels right to me. As parents
we are just looking for a safe place for our children to learn stuff. Is it so
much to ask that this place actually not suck?

As far as raising children with an eye towards "global competition," the
argument can be made that there are diabolical ways involving mind-games,
insults and cajoling that will breed more cutthroat competitors and that the
adults raised this way are better equipped for the "real world". I say have at
it. Parents can make that choice too if they want to. But I didn't want that
for my kids, period. Make the "real world" the place you want it to be.

~~~
le-mark
I agree with this assessment. People who are vitriolically opposed to
'participation trophies' miss something very basic in my opinion, and that is,
participation is optional. Meaning, you have to show up to get the trophy.

This is a subtle distinction I didn't get until raising my own kids. Maybe
this is obvious to others, but it was a real "aha" moment to me. To get your
kids to act the way you want, you can't just focus on the negative all the
time, you have to let them know when they're doing things right. If you just
wait for them to screw up then yell at them, you end up doing a lot of
yelling, and they're behavior sucks. But when they're sitting at the table
eating their dinner, using their fork like they're supposed to, a comment that
hey, you're doing a great job right now! really goes a long way in
communicating what your expectations are of them.

Before I had kids, if I'd heard this, I would think those parents are
pandering and dumb. But it really does work.

~~~
mjevans
Then don't lie about what you're praising, make it clear and focused on the
actual positive.

If you're going to have a ribbon or something, make sure that it's for seeing
the task through, for "being there". Not something to try to artificially
rival or nearly match 'being the best'.

~~~
kmonsen
Like most recreational sports like triathlon and marathon have finishing
medals. It feels ok when you get it, but clearly people getting these don't
think they are winning anything.

------
crawfordcomeaux
Haven't finished the article yet, but I already see several red flags as to
where they got things wrong:

1\. Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion, not external awards or
compliments. External stuff produces other-esteem and yeah, it's the root of
narcissism

2\. They tried to produce self-esteem through removing any chance of
suffering. Teaching people how to respond to suffering would've been much more
productive.

3\. Describing someone to themselves can be unintentionally harmful when
judgment or comparison is used, whether it be positive or negative. This
article shows how positive judgments (ie. compliments/praise) can be harmful.

If anyone's interested in a functional alternative, I highly recommend the
book "Nonviolent Communication."

~~~
strictfp
I'm not so sure I buy into that theory of yours any more than the article.

My personal theory is that self-esteem arises from the fact that you are aware
of your acceptance in a social group. Knowing that you are welcome calms you
and gives that assertive vibe.

I don't think it matters how much you believe in yourself. At least not beyond
a basic level. In fact, believing too much in a non-conforming self makes you
a narcissist, and believing too much in a conforming self makes you vain.

~~~
csydas
I would agree with this, and also that the 'damage' caused by "Everyone gets a
trophy" is overstated immensely. My experience having coached children's
basketball was that the consolation and participation prizes did little to
nothing to console the children when they lost. Even if they got a ribbon or a
tiny participation trophy, it didn't change their sour mood over losing unless
the children genuinely weren't that interested in the competition to begin
with, in which case I don't really think there's a problem in not being that
invested in a competition.

Undeserved praise and adoration does have negative side effects, and it likely
isn't the healthiest way to raise children, but the over-emphasis on
celebrating participation isn't the society ruining factor people make it out
to be. At worst it's probably just a waste of resources and effort.

On the other-hand, parents over-stressing and vicariously experiencing
competition through their children is a very real problem, and the behavior of
some of the adults I would see at gradeschool basketball games was just
shocking, especially given that it was low division schools, so mostly just
after-school sports. (i.e., there was no professional path here or proper
competition for any child looking to take a chance at professional play
someday - it was a bunch of 8 year olds running around the court, most of
which couldn't even throw the ball high enough to reach the rim of the lowered
basket). To see parents yelling and screaming at their kids to shove and hurt
other children in order to win was just ridiculous.

~~~
J-dawg
On the subject of "everyone gets a trophy", I can't believe this still
happens, because I've only ever heard it described in derisory terms.

I've never heard anyone say "the school gave my kid a 14th place ribbon, how
cute!". It's always "can you believe they give out ribbons for 14th place
now?!"

Kids are pretty astute at picking up on this stuff, and I expect that being
given a 14th place ribbon just feels a little sad and pathetic to a kid.

It probably doesn't do any real harm either, apart from contributing to
landfill waste!

~~~
brians
By contrast, my kids (all <8) are highly motivated to go to swim class on cold
days by the ribbons given out—every participant, every class.

~~~
Bartweiss
I wonder how much of this 'debate' is actually just people talking about
different age groups?

A participation ribbon might well have motivated me at age 6, and frankly I
doubt both the morality and common sense of anyone saying a six year old is
too happy at a swim class. Keeping kids involved at that age seems like the
biggest goal.

On the other hand, I have annoyed memories of getting participation ribbons at
15 for doing _terribly_ in races. They felt downright insulting, because I
knew exactly how I'd done and I was basically getting a ribbon for taking a
bus to the meet.

A shocking number of educational issues seem to boil down to "6 year olds are
not 15 year olds". That, and "offering things is better than enforcing them"
\- participation ribbons are way better than banning score-keeping, which I
also got to see.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
Oh this is a BRILLIANT point! We almost never breakdown our perspectives based
on age, much less take a moment to reflect on which of our ages is being
represented by a thought.

I think the natural bias to put discrete values on things existing on a
spectrum is where is all stems from. "We want to keep things simple, so here's
this recipe for self-esteem" as opposed to "here's an age-based breakdown of
ways to build self-esteem". Even then, the "enlightened" example is missing
loads of other conditions, like if the person suffered emotional abuse or has
automatic negative thoughts.

Also, banning score-keeping is the naive approach. I think an interesting one
would be to add a game score & encourage both teams to collaborate to increase
it. I don't know how it'd effect things, but it'd be fun to find out!

------
Briel
I think one of the detrimental effects of the positivity movement is, it
implies it's wrong and unnecessary to feel bad. Of course, if you feel bad for
days on end, there's an ongoing clinical or situational issue. If certain
external triggers consistently cause you to feel bad, you can dig deep to find
the reason and start to address it.

But to feel bad as a short-lived (hours to a few days) reaction to an event at
least partially within your control? Like getting a bad mark? Or screwing up a
work project? It's completely normal and similar to the physical pain felt
when you touch a burning stove. It's a stimulus "Oh this sucks! I don't want
to feel like this again so I'm going to make X, Y or Z change to avoid it."

~~~
projektir
I don't think it's as simple as you state here.

There were exceptions, but when I was in school, people who were getting bad
marks were getting a lot of bad marks, and kept getting them. People who got
good marks mostly stuck with the good marks. People who were bullied kept
getting bullied day in day out.

That's ongoing, but each individual event you would say is "normal". I think
it's a question to ask whether getting a bad mark on some test that some
people are obviously better suited for than others is actually a moral failing
and not a happenstance? Is being a bullying target a moral failing? (I say
moral failing because the emotional pain for such events is often of a "I
really fundamentally suck" variety)

It seemed much more reminiscent of a system where the attributes of children
somehow fell into place and defined how much suffering each of them was going
to end up with. I find it difficult to say anything good about this.

Maybe it's the opposite: the side effects of the failure of the self-esteem
movement is that we're back to saying suffering is great and builds character,
completely ignoring that it's not given out proportionally in the slightest.

~~~
marcosdumay
Penalties do build character, and there's no potential for achieving anything
if there's no potential for failing.

We should be teaching kids that they can improve, and show them how good they
are with honesty.

~~~
Bartweiss
But - where are the penalties?

My dyslexic friend who got straight Ds in school until he could drop out never
saw a penalty, just a steady stream of discouragement. The kids who got
bullied got bullied every damn day, usually for reasons they couldn't control.

I agree that the self-esteem bit is frequently absurd - my childhood soccer
team wasn't allowed to keep score, but was still expected to practice and
'improve'. But I do worry that no one on either side is actually talking about
giving kids opportunities and feedback. They're just adjusting the tone of a
zero-opportunity environment.

~~~
marcosdumay
I do agree, kids are not treated well overall. And the positivity trend was an
improvement from the overall sadism that existed before.

I just pointed what I think are currently flaws. There are currently no
penalties for bad behavior, and no honest assessment of kids abilities. There
is also an incredible lack of optimism about the children capacity (they
aren't told that they can improve), and (what I didn't post before) a lack of
real-word anchoring of expectations - at a minimum, we should tell children
that it's actually ok if they don't excel on everything, but they should work
to excel on something (and some things are more important than others).

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Someone once told me that their definition of happiness was setting themselves
goals they weren't sure they could reach and then exceeding them.

Kids don't need bullying. They don't need constant reassurance that they are
wonderful. They don't need severe abuse when they fail.

But they do need constant challenges which are mostly achievable, with a few
that aren't. They also need limits on their behaviour - as long as they're
reasonable, fair, adult limits, not capricious authoritarian limits.

I suspect the underlying problem is the emotionally brutal and insanely
competitive environment in schools - not just in academics or sports, but in
"popularity" and status.

Promoting self-esteem is the wrong answer to that problem. The culture itself
has to become more cooperative and less emotionally violent, and that's hard
to do when it's a fair reflection of much of the adult culture around it.

------
bambax
> _One manifestation of this has been grade inflation_

Pet peeve: there is no such thing as grade _inflation_ because there is no
grade after (or before) A.

What we're witnessing is much worse, it's grade _compression_ where all grades
move up with a hard limit.

Inflation wouldn't matter a lot, it would simply make comparisons between
periods of time more difficult (we would need to "adjust for inflation").

Compression is much worse because it destroys information, namely, the
difference between good and bad works in the same class.

If we had "price compression" in real life, society wouldn't be able to
function (everything would cost the same).

~~~
watwut
Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then you
are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering? With increasing
competition, the relative difference of the top should become smaller. That is
one factor.

Grades inflation happens because grades and having finished the school once
you started now matter more to students then they used to. The techniques they
often use (negotiation) are not exactly commendable, but it still had more to
do with price and benefits of it then self-esteem and trophies when they were
four years. old.

~~~
kqr
> Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then
> you are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering?

This is a can of worms all by itself, too. Grades can reflect

1) Absolute knowledge, but this unfairly favours students from rich and well-
educated parents; 2) Relative superiority compared to your age group, but this
encourages children to not help each other because they are afraid they're
competing for a limited number of higher grades; 3) Speed of development,
which is largely determined by genetics at any given age; 4) Effort, which is
unfair to the bright students who have nothing to put their effort in to; or
5) Potential future ability, which is nigh impossible to measure and not
necessarily even an important marker of anything.

There are many more options, and neither is obviously right. I don't think any
of these really help with the issue mentioned in the article.

~~~
mamon
Option 1) is the right thing to do, only it's hard to accept for people who
are prejudiced against having rich and well-educated parents.

Option 2) is also fine on small scale, but makes it harder to compare results
between different schools, states, countries.

Options 3 - 5 are just dubious (how would you measure "potential future
ability"?)

~~~
aninhumer
>it's hard to accept for people who are prejudiced against having rich and
well-educated parents.

No, it's problematic for people who believe an education system which
privileges the rich is a recipe for systemic inequality.

Now personally, I don't think a grading system is the right place to address
this inequality, but insisting anyone who does is just "prejudiced against the
rich" is facile.

~~~
mamon
Being rich is not a crime (although some social justice warriors try to make
it so). Helping your own children get a good education is not a crime also.

I agree that there should be some form of help for the poor, but gaming the
grading system is not the way to go.

Whatever you do the children of rich and well-educated will always be in top
5-10% of their class. We shouldn't promote equality by trying to bring them
down, instead we should focus on bringing other students up, making the gap
between top 5% and bottom 5% percent narrower.

~~~
mantas
Coming from Eastern Europe, I'm having hard time to grasp the "rich&educated"
meme.

Over there, rich and educated is barely a poor correlation. In my experience,
a lot of rich people kids were stupid and didn't have much academical success.
Yet there were folks coming from poor but educated families who did really
well. It's anecdata, but in my class it was ~ equal amount of rich-but-stipid
and poor-but-smart kids.

The real privilege is parents' attitude. The attitude that education (not
grades, but the real education) is important. This doesn't seem to correlate
with wealth much though. A lot of rich folks built their wealth by working
hard from zero. Which is frequently not education-heavy field and their
mentality is not much different from barely educated handyman. While a lot of
well educated people (teachers/educators, all kinds of office workers,
engineers and whatnot) are not even middle class.

~~~
psyc
I'm from the US, and have no idea why rich/poor entered this discussion. My
parents were very poor, but reasonably educated. I never picked up on any hint
of a correlation between wealth and good grades.

HOWEVER, I saw an enormous correlation between wealth and going to university.

~~~
kqr
I also belong to the poor-but-educated-parents so I know what you're saying. I
would assume the explanation for people with poor parents doing worse is
because the parents have less time to be involved. But if you want to know
more there are numerous studies. :)

------
shubhamjain
It shows an interesting conundrum. Tell kids—and even people—that their work
is awesome and they won't strive; tell them the harsh truth and they won't try
again. Bulk of my personal history consists of falling in the latter. I hated
being mediocre, and in my school life, I barely tried anything; when I did, it
only took a brief while to understand that I am not up for it.

What's the solution? It's not as easy as educating students about growth
mindset or long-term rewards of failure. They wouldn't absorb it the way you
intended. Most failures don't necessarily motivate to improve. In fact, I
think they result in people dropping out. It takes a long series of failures
before you accept it as a part of the process.

I have read many theories surrounding how we can make our kids strive, make
them resilient, and compassionate. So far, none of them have sounded
convincing. There are probably many hidden factors involved and I guess it
mostly boils down to: environment and luck.

~~~
3pt14159
You don't need to laud the outcome, you need to laud the inner part of the
child that is striving to be better and that enjoys the process of doing the
thing for its own sake. They need to know where they are, but discouragement
is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really
enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can
get better.

I was far more discouraged learning French than Russian and Russian isn't
exactly easier than French. The difference was that I was being forced to
learn French against my (at the time) wishes. I just wanted to do math and
play with computers - things that didn't discourage me.

Viewed from this angle the task of guiding children is different: How do we
get them to enjoy the things we need them to learn?

I don't have an answer to that, but maybe its ok. Maybe children also need to
learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate, and
maybe one day they'll change their mind about it.

~~~
kqr
> discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity.
> When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what
> they're doing so they can get better.

Are you sure this correlation is unidirectional? As a tutor, I frequently get
people to enjoy things they didn't before simply by trying really hard to
avoid discouraging feelings. In a way, a large portion of my tutoring is about
getting people to enjoy the things they used to hate, because that appears to
massively improve retention rate.

There's some more here if you're interested in how you get people to enjoy
stuff:
[http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/](http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/)

------
arximboldi
I think that blaming current narcissistic trends on this guy is extremely
naive: as so many others point out these are pervasive all over the western
world. And it ignores more fundamental changes, like the growth of private
mass media which is now ubiquitous, the permeation of the advertising language
into our daily lives, the take-over of the Internet by corporations that
profit precisely from our individualization, and other consequences of a
decades long ideological war on any form of collectivist thought.

~~~
J-dawg
This is a very good point. The author is promoting his book about self-
obsession, but conflating self-obsession with self-esteem seems wrong. They
are surely linked, but are different things.

In fact, people with low self-esteem are more likely to appear self-obsessed
because they need validation and reassurance from other people. They literally
spend more time in their own heads, worrying about what others think of them.

If you have a solid core of self-belief, you're less likely to care about
others' judgement of you.

------
Animats
_" I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special."_ \- Jane Lane, in
_Daria_ , after being sent to self-esteem class in high school.

~~~
Bartweiss
I sort of feel like _Daria_ should be required watching for any adult with a
"genius new idea" for improving education and child-raising. If your clever
new scheme wouldn't work at Lawndale, it's not going to work in the real world
either.

------
danans
As with many social reactionary trends, it seems like one flawed system (all
spoils to the "winner") was replaced with another flawed system (there are no
winners).

The former system tends to reward those who have inborn or socially provided
advantages, and makes the prize the end goal rather than the process. This can
result in winning-at-all-cost behavior, even if results in damage to oneself
or society (i.e perf enhancing drugs).

The reactionary​ everyone-is-a-winner approach robs people of signal they need
to optimize their efforts to succeed.

IMO a saner approach would be to encourage competition but not make suffering
via social exclusion or destitution the cost of losing.

Intra-group competition within those bounds can make the group stronger, but
left unchecked can do the opposite.

------
vlehto
There seems to be several obvious mistakes in the article and in the original
movement:

A. Idea that you can easily mold the core beliefs of other people by simply
telling them to be like this or that. It's not generally true. But low esteem
specifically makes it difficult to accept positive external feedback. Even
when it's hard earned and genuine.

B. Treating human self image as one dimensional linear thing. Where on the
other end you have narcissism and on the other complete self-worthlessness and
ensuing violent depression.

The reality seems to be lot more nuanced. There are things like self-respect,
self-compassion and sense of (potential) usefulness to others. None of these
are hard linked to how good or bad you feel about yourself.

C. Some kind of misunderstanding of Narcissism. You can never turn normal
healthy adult into narcissist by praising too much. (But you may cause some
other negative effects.) Actual narcissist are often depressed themselves.
Actual narcissist often aren't particularly interested in putting selfies to
Instagram.

------
saltedmd5
> A little more than a year later, Barrowford found itself in the news again.
> Ofsted had given the school one of its lowest possible ratings, finding the
> quality of teaching and exam results inadequate. The school, their report
> said, “emphasised developing pupils’ emotional and social wellbeing more
> than the attainment of high standards”. Somehow, it seemed, the nurturing of
> self-esteem had not translated into higher achievement.

Maybe Ofsted is measuring the wrong things.

------
J-dawg
Related question: does anyone have personal experience of significantly
improving their self-esteem as an adult? Or is your level of self-esteem
pretty much fixed as a child and something that needs to be "managed" in
adulthood rather than changed?

~~~
scarmig
I've done so.

I strongly encourage some kind of fitness routine or activity. I think a lot
of cases of low self esteem come from a mind-body disconnect. And that allows
for resentment or even hatred of your own body. That hatred may be
subconscious or overt.

Actually engaging in a fitness routine undermines that dichotomy, particularly
a skill based one. Coupled with the fact that pretty much everyone treats fit,
attractive people way better in their daily lives, you rapidly build up a
virtuous cycle of self esteem, fitness, and social approval.

~~~
J-dawg
Thanks, that's encouraging. I don't think it's the whole story because I work
out fairly hard and still have low self-esteem, but it's good to know that
change is possible.

------
icc97
It is worth mentioning that the school in the article, Barrowford primary
school in the UK, was given a 'Good' (2 on a scale of 1-4) Ofsted report [0]
in 2012, then in 2015 (just after the 'heartwarming letter' went viral) this
dropped to Inadequate (4) and the most recent report in 2016 had them back up
at 'Good'.

It's also worth noting that in the 2015 'Inadequate' report, they specify
that:

> Standards are improving and are getting closer to those attained nationally
> by seven- and 11-year-olds as a result of some well-targeted small group
> teaching, particularly of disadvantaged pupils.

So standards had improved, but they felt the need to lower the report from
'Good' to 'Inadequate'.

It's almost like the Ofsted were punishing them for getting famous.

[0]: [https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-
inspec...](https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-
report/provider/ELS/119166)

~~~
sideshowb
Anecdotally I have heard of schools failing Ofsted for allegedly political
reasons (ie they are still comprehensives and not on the government's
preferred "academy" funding model; an assessment fail can force their hand at
getting in line). I would take ofsted ratings for any comp with a pinch of
salt.

------
ada1981
It's unfortunate that this guy polluted the memesphere with this. The research
into the lifelong benefits of children having access to secure attachment
figures is mindblowing -- would have been great if he got passionate about
approaches that actually have big impacts.

You can build "self-esteem" from a variety of things, the most sustainable and
healthy of which is from a deep sense that you can handle whatever emotions
come up in your system and by extension, whatever life throws at you.

Building "self-esteem" on the fact that you accomplished something -- say, won
a tournament or built a company and not on the experience of not abandoning
yourself along the way is a recipe for unfulfillment and a string of other
ills.

Healthy self-esteem is not built by giving everyone a trophy or protecting
them from their own emotions but rather, helping children learn that they are
accepted no matter what emotions they are having and thus learn to accept
themselves no matter the emotional experience they are having.

As a former World Games Invitee, I can tell you that losing in competition is
painful. For me, often debilitatingly so. And it wasn't until I was able to
explore the roots of that pain response that I could heal old traumas from my
childhood of my father giving us the silent treatment for days at a time after
losing as a high school football coach and the unhealthy relationship he had
with performance coming from farther upstream in our family system.

Our culture has created a false dichotomy of "positive and negative" emotions
where we avoid conflicts, numb out with drugs, sex, TV, accomplishment,
religion, food, conflict, drama, criticism and more. Our nervous systems don't
feel safe processing anger, sadness, despair, and grief and so we turn to
Psychiatry to suppress the symptoms vs. developing the capacity to be with our
entire range of emotion and present experience.

------
SeanDav
What needs to be encouraged is _genuine_ improvement. I think the child that
came 14th should get recognition, if last time she came 33rd in the same
field.

In addition, top performers should always be encouraged. Relative to their
peers, they have achieved as much as they can, and that should be recognized
and lauded as well.

------
underwater
> At Barrowford, people learned, teachers were discouraged from issuing
> punishments, defining a child as “naughty” and raising their voices.

Tell a person that they're stupid every day and then ask them to apply
themselves. They're not even going to try. Now call a kid naughty and then ask
them to behave themselves.

~~~
ptaipale
Tell them they're naughy when they behave naughtily, tell them they're nice
when they behave nicely.

That sounds like a solid plan to me, and there's no reason to see why it would
then be a problem to ask them to behave themselves.

~~~
watwut
A kid that believes that he is inherently naughty wont even try nor has reason
to try to behave itself. It is not even actionable command. Especially when it
comes to little ones, telling them what they should do and then insisting on
it work waaay better then any amount of hurting them (whether physically or
when you try to make them feel bad).

The fact is, the spoiled generation has really lower criminality rates,
violence rates, takes less drugs then supposedly better behaved predecessors.
People love to compare worst students now with best students of their
generation or with their idealized idea of how great they themselves were -
ignoring huge amount of people who dropped out of the school knowing pretty
much nothing and that was it. Meanwhile, current best students are actually
pretty good.

It is not all down to parenting changes only, but given better objective
results the nostalgia for good old times is not really fact based.

~~~
cnnsucks
"A kid that believes that he is inherently naughty"

Occasional negative feedback doesn't create an inherent self-image.

"It is not even actionable command"

These are children, not puppies; children are perfectly capable of associating
being called "naughty" with specific behavior.

You have very extreme views regarding children.

~~~
watwut
Negative feedback is much larger category then just telling someone "you are
naughty". There was not mention of occasional in op post either. Most
troublemakers are not making trouble occasionally - the kids who are real
problem do unwanted things often.

"These are children, not puppies; children are perfectly capable of
associating being called "naughty" with specific behavior."

Their implication about specific behavior being often "playing in sight" or "I
wont please teacher so I will make myself funny so other kids like me at
least". Or the implication does not matter, because behavior was down to
impulsive or unable to control emotions (I am frustrated I act out so it gives
me attention and it is already reflex at this point).

"You have very extreme views regarding children."

Nice try.

------
clumsysmurf
Another article in The Atlantic was published recently, mentioning John
Vasconcellos. Kristin Neff thinks self-compassion works better.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-
self-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-
compassion-works-better-than-self-esteem/481473)

Neff also has a book
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JN1DBO](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JN1DBO)

~~~
WalterGR
That article was posted here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958)

428 points | 25 days ago | 148 comments

------
pvnick
Vasco and his humanist priest had their Catholic theology all wrong, and their
heresy had disastrous consequences. There is a tendency within Catholic
circles to view oneself only as an irredeemable sinner. This fills one with
shame and causes a sort of false humility that convinces oneself to reject all
good things ("his professional success was at odds with how he thought of
himself; he felt he didn’t deserve it"). One further effect of focusing
excessively on one's sinfulness, rather than on the love of God, is that
quitting sin is much harder. The priest's belief that man is inherently good
is also heresy at odds with scripture.

The truth as the Church would describe it is that man is intrinsically sinful
but has been redeemed through Christ, and that should fill one's heart with
joy and gratitude. No, man does not _deserve_ any good thing, but when good
things happen they should be appreciated as gifts, not rejected out of shame.
This is true humility.

Some claim that self esteem should instead be replaced with self-compassion.
This is a good idea that is in line with Church teaching, since to see
yourself as God sees you (with unconditional love in spite of one's faults) is
to adopt a perception which is based in truth, rather than the self-esteem
movement which is based on convincing yourself of the lie that you are
unconditionally good.

------
helly
I find the topic of self-esteem super interesting.

Somehow it seems to be one of the most fundamental factors of our well being
and the course of our life. Yet we usually don't even try to measure it. Do I
have below or above average self-esteem? I couldn't say.

Googling around brought up the "Rosenberg self-esteem scale" questionnaire. I
tried it. Scored is 14. Which is considered low. Uh oh :)

Now what?

~~~
ageofwant
Well, you know, just be yourself, unless of course your are shit...

Also, do keep in mind that there are a lot of losers out there. Changes are
your are a loser.

See, this is a silly road to take.

------
atemerev
Self-esteem is obviously important, and low self-esteem can obviously be a
problem.

However:

1) It is not the only problem out there; 2) Lying about somebody's
achievements is not a good way to raise their self-esteem, in the same way as
maxing out your credit card on indulgent purchases is not a great way to
achieve happiness. It works, somewhat — just until it doesn't. 3) A better way
to achieve genuine self-esteem is to solve objectively difficult problems,
successfully. Tests and exams are not problems; they were meant to give you an
objective feedback so you could adjust your priorities accordingly. The
straightest way to unlink test results from self-esteem is to give them in
private and discourage comparison. 4) Like in sport, self-improvement is what
counts in life, not the compared results. You are better that you were a year
before, and that's all that matters.

------
cubano
My personal-often-difficult journey through life tells me this...there are _at
least_ two types of self-esteem, and probably several more.

Achievement-esteem of course has to do with the trophy stuff and doing things
your peers can't do as well. I excelled at this sort of thing and have all
sort of Al Bundy-type anecdotes I'm sure no one wants to hear.

The much more important type of self-esteem is the one that forms much earlier
in life and is instilled by your parents love and devotion, and is the one
that is much more important to your future-self's emotional well being.

My personal experience tells me this one drives addiction and probably many
criminal behaviors as we get older.

As a proponent of the Einstein's block universe theory, I often wonder if
everything is already baked in and we are just what we are destined to be
anyway, so what does it matter how we feel really?

------
cbanek
Penn & Teller did a great episode of this on bullshit. Season 8, Episode 9.

------
danans
The writer throws his credibility under the bus with this:

> On the downside, it also included a white man in a turban who predicted the
> work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise
> in the west

White men in Turbans might be Gora Sikhs, who are sincere adherents of their
particular faith, and are undeserving of this bigotry if the speaker was a
member of the group.

Even if it was just a white man in a turban, so what? There is no minimum
melanin requirement for wearing one. And how does that information advance the
article's argument at all?

~~~
andreyk
I think you are being a bit harsh here. Sure, the white man in a turban might
be a totally normal person capable of carrying out good work. But in terms of
probabilities, there's also a significant chance they are an esoteric new-agey
type (in my mind). The latter possibility is confirmed by the "predicted the
work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise in
the west" bit, which is the actually critical part of that quote. So the
turban bit is included to give a fuller picture of this weird new-agey type
who says ridiculous things like that, or so it seems to me.

~~~
danans
The author provided no context for the sun rising in the west comment, which
in every usage I've seen is a metaphor for a fundamental societal shift, not a
literal astronomical prediction. The principle of charity applies there too.

The reality that a large number of Gora Sikhs practice the faith they were
raised in undermines the new-agey argument, unless one is singling out their
actual religion which is centuries old in it's current form.

The only other explanation for the comment is the appalling idea that a person
should be ridiculed for adopting the culture of which they don't share the
dominant adherents' physical phenotype.

------
ksk
I think people on both sides of this issue like to blabber a lot about human
psychology and high falutin theories. At the end of the day, in any domain,
you have to actually implement your ideas, and actually show that they work. A
broken system that sometimes works is better than an ideal system that has
never been shown to work.

------
nstj
> To answer that, you have to go back to 1986 and the work of an eccentric and
> powerful California politician, John “Vasco” Vasconcellos

Funny that they don't really describe who he was or his political position
(state senator).

I find it hard to believe that 1 CA state senator is responsible for a
syndrome experienced in the U.K.

------
jt2190
This is not a news article, but an excerpt from an upcoming book:

> Adapted from Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed And What It’s Doing To
> Us by Will Storr, published by Picador on 15 June...

(Edit: note the author's begging the question in the subtitle.)

------
crawfordcomeaux
I couldn't help codependently caretaking everyone in this thread by attempting
to other-esteem everyone through the upvoting of all comments.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
is more complete

------
josephv
The entire system of institutionalizing your children to teach them to be
functional is the root cause, never let whatever self-esteemers or new mathers
or whatever goofy next educational horizon the principal learned in their
post-doc educational studies class override the laborious, at times
excruciating, but ultimately rewarding goal of tactical, immediate, and
focused remediation of your children's emotional vulnerabilities.

Tangentially, this is what the book Frankenstein was all about, the effect of
education on different individuals, the most memorable of the monster being
educated only formally, presumably by being given 'you showed up ribbons',
with no family support structure, and growing up... with a rotten brain.

------
slaunchwise
So this must be where Barney came from. "Everyone is special" was such pablum.

------
usmeteora
Meh

1\. "prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special
and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences."

This annoys me, when people throw in an entirely new assumption at the end of
a sentence "...cocooning them from everyday consequences"

You can entirely regaurd growing adults with positive self regard AND let them
experience the consequences of their actions.

The worriesome part about this is the conflation that consequences = lack of
positive self regaurd to the growing adult.

If you truly uncaccoon growing adults from consequences and let them
experience the results of their mistakes, they don't need your lecture of
negative judgment on top of it, life will be there to teach them, and you can
positively regard them as humans that make mistakes, and by not caccooning
them expect them to solve the problems.

I mean honestly, the parents who believe their kids need a lecture about every
mistake they make and judgment are the ones who are known as helicoptor
parents and actually those kids end up being the least capable of being their
own advocates because their parents never back off and allow them to make
their own mistakes and struggle to find their way out.

This is why the Standford admissions office did an article on this, supposed
Helicoptor parenting which was basically Stanford having problems with all
these kids with 4.9 GPAs, 87 AP exams, science fair admissions with PhD level
work put into them, who were held to hardcore high standards all work no play
no emotion work work work your life = your GPA and the school you get into,
and saying these kids literally could not solve the simplest everyday life
problems and their parents called the school everyday trying to micromanage
them or argue with Professors if their kids got less than B+s on exams

Its also why after the Gunn highschool suicide incident, highschool kids
posted online to the parents to "back off" and quit pushing their kids so
hard.

It's hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously, but I read on...

This is to show the other extreme and REAL effect of the opposite of show no
compassion, only regard growing adults based on their accomplishments relative
to everyone else.

If you take this attitude in life youre not helping your kid grow, you
suffocating them, and debilitating their own sense of life navigation. This
isn't about them, its about YOU imposing your self worth and narcissism and
identify and your own self worth on how far along you can get your kid in
life, and you need to back off.

I've witnessed this first hand going to university, and was really disturbed
by helicopter parents versus my upbringing which was not helicopter parenting
at all. Never seen kids more miserable in their life. I'm not even sure it was
their life, they were walking poster children for their parents to show
society look what I can do. Very few times did I see the kids who grew up like
this get to make any of their own decisions. Very sad.

2\. Grade inflation IS NOT there to boost self esteem, its there to allow
elite institutions to maintain elitism by getting ivy kids good jobs and
preparing them well for exams.

2/3s of all grades made at Brown University are As. It's there so everyone can
get good jobs at high end consulting firms if they choose to instead of using
their Political Science degree for some less profitable career path where the
need is great, and grades/competition/elite ivy names matter less.

GPA grade inflation is about highschools gaining and maintaining status to
justify private school tuition, and college does the same equivalent but has
the double incentive of increasing competition to admissions for more room to
choose the cream of the crop, and increasing the dowry back to the school from
happy and financially successful alumni.

Both appeals to the idea that

a. negative judgment from their parents or teachers is the only way to allow
growing adults to experience consequences of their actions

b. grade inflation is for the self esteem boost of individuals.

are false and the rest of this article rides on these astounding assumptions
the author assumes you will buy into

*Note: I do understand the everyone is a winner, and clapping for every extracurricular club your kid joins, and treating them like little geniuses who Harvard would be at a loss of not having because youve decided thats the case for your baby since he showed his genius capabilities by bring two months early on the growth scale for expected timeline for piecing legos together, and ever since youve just been doing your job by providing the best past of growth for your little genius...yeh yeh yeh I know that happens

but that has nothing to do with needing negative judgment to grow, or the
motivation behind grade inflation, which is strictly for the long term
financial benefit of the institutions providing it.

