This article by Abe Katsman in the Jerusalem Post has caused a bit of a stir among the anti-Obama crowd and Republicans.
It provides a stinging opinion of the warm and fuzzy feeling Obama is creating among voters…and it also touches on some of the reasons we are planning on homeschooling.
“Obama has tapped into is the first generation educated in schools focused on “self-esteem.” Now, the products of self-esteem education have come of political age in substantial numbers, perhaps with profound implications for this and future elections.
For the past two decades, America’s educational establishment has stressed the inculcation of self-esteem as the supreme educational goal. Self-respect – the product of struggle and achievement – is out; self-esteem – the entitlement to feel great self-worth regardless of actual accomplishment – is in.
Strict correction of misspelling or of wrong answers to math problems is discouraged. Competition is a big no-no: many youth sports leagues forbid keeping score, lest any child’s self-esteem suffer from the indignity of losing. Posting honor rolls is discouraged, as it might injure the self-esteem of those who did not make the grade.
Grade inflation is rampant in schools: according to one recent study, about half of today’s college freshman had an “A” average in high school compared to under 20% in the late 1960s, even though SAT scores have tanked over the same period. The focus on self-esteem has, in a sense, been a huge success.
For example, American students have very high scores when asked to assess how good they are at math. Unfortunately, they have low/mediocre scores in actual math performance, routinely being outscored by students in most other developed countries.
Inevitably, however, such over-indulgence of students leads to increased narcissism, self-absorption, and sense of entitlement. Those with self-esteem disproportionate to their achievement tend to be less willing to take responsibility for their own failures, shortcomings, or bad behavior.
Coddled children raised to believe that any dream is not only attainable, but an entitlement granted regardless of actual effort and accomplishment are increasingly growing into depressed and stressed young adults as they rudely discover that the post-school world is not so cooperative and doesn’t really care about their dreams or their feelings. In the real world, they keep score.“