What were we thinking?

Remember the self esteem craze? That only telling a child positive praise would build up their self-esteem, which as we all knew, was the major predictor of success? Well, that was all wrong. It seems that kids are a whole lot smarter than the experts on kids, as any good teacher could tell you. The results:

According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s aptitude.

I begin to question the self esteem craze myself when I read of a study that ranked high school kids for self esteem. Girls had lower self-esteem than boys, which supposedly showed that our schools were systematically failing girls and tilting the playing field against them. African American females had the lowest self-esteem of all, so they had a double tilt against them.

But African American boys had the highest self-esteem of all. By the logic of the study and its commentary they must have had the most advantaged education giving them the best shot at success.