Listening to Jeb Bush, at least now I know I'm not the only one who thinks we've carried this self-esteem thing too far. At a Foundation for Excellence in Education summit Thursday, hours before he was due on the GOP presidential debate stage in Cleveland, Bush spoke to a rapt audience: “This morning, over 213 million Chinese students went to school, and no one debated whether academic standards should be lowered to protect their students’ self-esteem.”
But that lowering is happening right here in the U.S., the former governor said. He even gave a Florida example: Orange County School Board members have made it so students can’t score lower than a 50 when it comes to quarterly or end-of-semester grades, he said.
“You get 50 out of 100 just for showing up and signing your name,” he told the audience. “This was done, and I quote here from a local official, so the students ‘do not lose all hope.’”
And we wonder why other countries are outpacing the United States. This is why, he said.
Coddling students who grow up into a competitive world has been bothering me for so long, I can't even remember when I started to notice.
Every little kid on the block where I live is an honor student. Even the ones whose parents tell me, "I can't get Johnny to do his homework" or "Suzie is 7, probably she should know the alphabet by now but, oh, I don't know, she's such a happy little girl ..."
I realize I'm opening myself up to criticism here. Self-esteem is so 21st century and I'm so, well, pick any fogey decade.
What's wrong, ask the self-esteemers, with helping children feel good about themselves? Isn't "low self-esteem" on the dossier of every boot-camp inductee, every prison inmate, every recovering addict?
Probably. But why is improving a child's self-esteem something we can only achieve by reducing all children to the same common denominator?
Now, I realize the good old days weren't always so good, especially for children whose fragile egos were at the mercy of all kinds of authority figures -- some well-meaning, some not.
Back in the '50s and '60s, if a kid had too much self-esteem we called him or her "conceited." I still remember once in the early '50s when my friend Don, the 8-year-old boy next door, told me his coach said he was so good he should be captain of his Little League team. His father, listening from the next room, suddenly loomed in the doorway, eyes blazing. "Knock that chip off your shoulder, Mr. Too-Big-for-Your-Britches, or I'll knock it off for you."
All these years later, more than a decade into the new millennium, Don's dad would have strutted into the room, sidled up to his son, thrown an arm around his shoulder and said, "The coach should have made you captain by now."
The self-esteemers like the 2015-dad approach: In order to achieve, kids need to know we believe in them.
The correctors of the '50s would have called the 2015-dad approach a lesson in self-indulgence, a surefire way to create a discipline problem later on.
Me, I don't like to see harsh and insensitive treatment of children. But I do like to tell children the truth. So, I would have asked, is Don good enough to be captain? Is he a leader? As a matter of fact, he was. But had he been mediocre, I would have wanted him to know he needs a little more work on his game and take the coach's instructions to heart.
Nowadays, where kids are concerned, the truth is secondary. The idea apparently is to be positive about every child, relentlessly so, effusively so, all the time.
I think a lot of parents and teachers have become so afraid of putting too much pressure on kids that perhaps they're underestimating them.
Look at the early-school grading system of "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory." I can show you two children who were in the same classroom three years ago.
- One, a first-grader who hustled, paid attention, was helpful and worked hard to learn. She was graded "satisfactory."
- The other, her classmate, who never opened a workbook, never stayed in her seat, never learned to count beyond 10 -- but showed up every day. She was graded "satisfactory."
The teacher admitted the good student found out and was miffed, but she believed the bad student "needs encouragement now so that later, she'll be like 'The Little Engine That Could.'"
How many children have we known who were failing most subjects but were promoted anyway?
Why are students who are taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test now, given fewer questions and more time to answer them?
Now we have schools scrapping class rankings, saying their students would perform better without the pressure and with a "level playing field."
Surely there's a way to offer constructive criticism without damaging a child's self-worth.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think children can handle an honest appraisal of their abilities. And frankly, they deserve nothing less. Besides, every child is good at something and some are good at lots of things. OK, those things don't always balance out. But that's life.
Why can't we concentrate on each child's individual "positive" rather than on a collective false "positive"?
The point is, if everybody is special, then nobody is. Which means, if we're looking to imbue our children with incentive, we have absolutely nowhere to go.
I've lived overseas; I have relatives there. I've seen the education standards that propel their students to incredible academic heights. So I guess, yes, I do understand perfectly what Jeb Bush is saying, and I want my state and my school system and my country to set the bar as high here as they do across the water. I want my grandchildren to have the opportunity to compete successfully with the best in the world.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
