By now, most people (with the exception of many psychotherapists) recognize that the self-esteem movement officially launched by California in 1986 has been at best silly, and at worst injurious to society, despite whatever small benefit it may have had to some individuals.
The movement was begun by California assemblyman John Vasconcellos. As the NewYork Times reported, “Mr. Vasconcellos, a 53-year-old Democrat, is described by an aide as ‘the most radical humanist in the Legislature.’”
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In an interview at the time, Mr. Vasconcellos told me he had personally benefited from therapy. It enabled him to improve the poor self-esteem he had inherited from his childhood. He therefore concluded that improving other people’s self-esteem would greatly help society.
And so, California created its Task Force to Promote Self-esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, whose guiding principle was to raise young people’s self-esteem in order to increase the number of socially responsible people in society.
This belief — that increasing self-esteem will increase goodness in society — spread through the rest of America like proverbial wildfire.
It turns out, however, that the premise was entirely misguided. There is no correlation between goodness and high self-esteem. But there is a correlation between criminality and high self-esteem.
Florida State University professor Roy Baumeister (Ph.D. psychology, Princeton University) has revealed that in a lifetime of study of violent criminals, the one characteristic nearly all these criminals share is high self-esteem.
Yes, people with high self-esteem are the ones most prone to violence.
The 1960s and ’70s ushered in what I refer to as the Age of Feelings. And one of the most enduring feelings-based notions that came out of that era was that it was critically important that children feel good about themselves. High self-esteem, it was decided, should be imparted to children — no matter how undeserving — whenever possible. That is why boys on losing teams are given trophies, why more and more high schools have ceased naming a valedictorian (lest the other graduates feel bad about themselves), why some states have abolished winning and losing in children’s soccer games (lest those on the losing teams suffer low self-esteem), etc.
A friend of mine provided me with a perfect illustration. At a Little League baseball game, he saw a pitch thrown a few feet above the batter’s head. Needless to say, the batter didn’t swing. But to my friend’s amazement, he heard both the batter’s father and coach yell out, “Good eye!”
For those who don’t know baseball, it does not take a “good eye” not to swing at a ball thrown over one’s head. It takes a functioning eye.
One result of all this has been a generation that thinks highly of itself for no good reason. Perhaps the most famous example is the survey of American high-school students and those of seven other countries. Americans came in last in mathematical ability but first in self-esteem about their mathematical ability.
But it turns out that feeling good about oneself for no good reason — as destructive as that is — is not the biggest problem.
Psychologist John Rosemond, a child-rearing expert, recently opened my eyes to the even more troubling problem: High self-esteem in children does not produce good character, and in fact is likely to produce a less moral individual.
This flies in the face of perhaps the deepest-held conviction among the present generation, as well as the baby boomers: that it is a parent’s fundamental obligation to ensure that his child has high self-esteem.
I worked for several years in various residential treatment centers for juveniles, and for 4 years in a wilderness program. The RTC's all promoted high self-esteem & had recidivism rates of approximately 86%.
The Wilderness Program was built around behavior mod precepts; among other things it had a rule banning the use of the word "therapy" or "mental illness" and "self-esteem". The entire program was built around teaching basic survival skills starting with "this is a piece of wood. You cut it to make firewood. This is a match. You strike it thusly to produce flame. Fire will heat you...etc."
The Wilderness recidivism rate was consistently below 14%, after 5 years post graduation.
I no longer work in the feild, though I have a psychology. I have observed for years that children who are drug addicted & thugs always have high self-esteem. Children with actual skills begin to acquire self-respect which is much more important & a much better indicator of a potentially good adult person.
Mr. Prager, I very much appreciate your contribution to this topic.
Sadly, the self-esteem movement has engulfed conservatives as much as it has the Left. Any time I suggest to others that a little "tough love" is needed, they seem to have a reflexive distate for anything that will hurt a child's feelings. (The same even holds true for pet dogs!)
This is symptomatic, of course, of the broader development through which conservatives have ceased ACTING conservative in their daily lives, giving in instead to the loosey-goosey ways of modern society.
The only thing I'd mention as a constructive critique of your article is that the self-esteem movement may have become labeled as such during the 80s in California, but the mentality seems to have emerged post-WWII. Perhaps the reason this area of study and policy spread like proverbial wildfire is because the pre-existing conditions were just right for such a conflagration?
I agree COMPLETELY that discipline and character should be our main focus.
But it is worth nothing that Narcissists actually have very low self-esteem. All the self-aggrandizing they do is a response to that. Drug addicts and criminals might act tough but really if they had any self-respect they wouldn't let themselves be put in that position.
I think the distinction between self-esteem and self-respect is a central one. Unless we provide our children with concrete expectations and the means to meet them (hard work, education, etc.) they will never get anywhere in life. They'll never become a person worthy of respect.
If it's accompanied by self-respect, self-esteem (confidence, really) is ideal. I was a drug addict years ago, and I can tell you that it was discipline and hard work that got me out of it. And only after that did self-respect follow.
As NauticalBears said, self-respect is more important, the implication being that it is earned, not granted. I'd add that humility is also acquired during the earning phase as the individual realizes that the universe does NOT revolve around them and that life is tough and challenges don't roll over for us, they have to be overcome.
The self-esteem movement in education is like feeding candy to malnourished children - plenty of calories and no problem at all getting them to swallow it, but it provides no nourishment whatsoever, nothing for them to thrive upon. But as I interpret Cackcon's comments, if we as parents are to give our children "good food" we ought to quit snacking on the candy of self-gratification ourselves. I couldn't agree more.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I hear the "We have to love ourselves before we can love others" pap coming from the education and helping professions and the churches.
You want to feel good about yourself, then learn to do good and useful things for others. Make something beautiful and useful and sell it or give it away.
What's funny is that "self esteem" is a translation of Henri Bergson"s "Amour Propre" which was necessary for "elan vital." I can not explain why a fin de seicle philosopher came to dominate U.S. education theory.
Confidence, self- or otherwise, is the fruit... NOT the tree.
I'm satisfied that thought leads to actions; repetition leads to abilities; confidence derives from abilities. Insert good and better before each step to yield commensurate results.
Thanks, Dr. P, for cogently stating what should be obvious on its face. But then, common sense isn't all that common.
Teaching kids character is part of it, but we also need to work on our culture.
Our culture desperately needs antibodies against the tall-talkers, the camera-hoggers and the self-aggrandizers.
In the vaudeville days, proto-celebrities were not necessarily idolized by society, but often seen as pathetic, clownish runaways and malcontents.
Remember how Bush 41's childhood school graded students on "Claims more than his fair share of time and attention?" (And getting that box checked was a -bad- thing.)
Today, a kid with good character can enter the wider world and still get bamboozled by the rewards and sycophantic behavior that modern culture bestows on people riding the self-esteem bubble.
We need smarter character education -and- a more skeptical culture.
Of course the drug addicted children had high self esteem, drugs make you have that when you take them, but look to why the children started using the drugs. I know because I was a sixteen year old drug addict of many types and I did have low self esteem. Thats what drove me drugs thinking no one loved me and such. But after I got heavily in the drugs I started not caring about anyone and becoming socialpathic to say. I then had very high self esstem and though I could manipulate and swindle anyone I came across.
What a silly (and factually spurious) article. There is no observable correlation between self-esteem and character.
While it is obvious that a megalomaniac might exhibit characteristics of high "self-esteem" the inverse (or converse, or obverse, or reverse) has no correlating association. Of course the idea that all criminality can be generalized from the (highly fictionalized) stereotype of megalomania is a foolish attribution of a flawed anecdote at best, and more likely the stumblings of someone not self-aware enough to perceive his own flawed extrapolation of an anecdote.
Other absurdly false, though less germaine statements include the idea that the "self-esteem" movement was born on the breath of a California legislator in 1986. I was a first grader in 1981 in the arch-liberal social experiment of rural Montana and was forced to complete "self-esteem" worksheets (though I also had to sing "This Land is Your Land" too, which would prove the progressivism of the local school district except that Woodie Guthrie hadn't been knighted a saint in the cause of World Communism yet.)
You could potentially point to the mainstreaming of the idea when "I'm Okay, You're Okay" topped the New York Times besteller in 1972 (though first published in 1969.)
On to baseball (a game Mr. Prager has clearly never played) -- it takes a good eye and a considerable amount of practice to be able to judge when to swing at the pitch. The ball is a small moving object with a rapidly changing trajectory which the batter, being primarily downrange from it, has little cue to. It takes a good eye and a steady hand (particularly in little league), not to mention a good deal of self-esteem to risk not swinging at (or dodging) every projectile hurtled towards you.
Sounds like some folks are actually promoting narcissism, not self-esteem. They are not the same thing at all. Self-esteem is a result as others have already said.
Excellent commentary - our children will never learn to deal with the real world if they don't first learn to deal with the fact that there will be times when you win and times when you lose. The best lessons are to be gracious, whether a winner or loser and if you lost, to work harder if you want to be a winner the next time!
NO MORE red ribbons for all! Those who put forth the greatest effort with a resulting TOP-QUALITY product SHOULD receive a blue ribbon!
And no matter how many adults tell the kids to not 'keep score' in a ballgame, they do ;-)
Interesting column. Occasionally I joke that I feel better about myself whenever I make others feel bad, and that by feeling superior, I help my self-esteem.
What that column is saying is that perhaps my humor has more truth to it than I thought.
I've been to thousands of LL, HS, college games as player, coach and umpire.
Whenever a ball was hurled over the batter's head as you described and some bench jockey yelled "good eye" it was done sarcastically.
If you must use baseball analogies, as they also say many times at the old ball yard, "Buy a dog, name him Clue, then you'll have one." Just a pet peeve of mine.
That seems uncalled for. I value and respect Dr. Dobson's advise. If you are going to take a potshot at him, you ought to at least reference where he - you believe - has said something contrary to this article.
I really enjoy calculating the "Math Question". Makes me feel good, raises my self esteem.
Hey, Dennis. I found your article interesting, but it is important to recognize the difference between "self esteem" and "confidence". Esteem is really a noun designed to be directed at someone not ourselves. "Self esteem" is an oxymoron, or something like that. It may exist, but it shouldn't. Self confidence, however is a valuable trait. It is developed, however, not through what others say about us, or even how they treat us, but comes with experience and successful achievement. This requires effort, hard work even. It's a "feel good" that is earned, not merely received.
I don't particularly esteem myself, and certainly struggled, particularly in my youth, with an inferior self image. It's not that I dwelt on perceiving myself as inferior. Rather, I felt inferior, or feared I might be inferior in many ways. I think this is normal for most of us, especially as we are maturing. With experience, we begin to understand that most people are like us and we're not so inferior, after all. We work hard and achieve some success in life, thereby developing confidence. That's good. It's a positive "feel good" thing, because we earned it.
There's nothing wrong with feeling good about oneself. In fact, it does not lead to narcissism, or criminal behavior. It leads to continuing success. Adults should certainly encourage young people to feel good about themselves. This can best be accomplished by teaching them to develop their talents through hard work, being willing to accept constructive criticism and recognizing that there is competition in life. We don't all need to be number one at something, or anything, but we should work at something as though we want to be. Your article was a bit vague, even misleading in this regard.
