Self-Esteem

Self-esteem has gotten a bad rap among conservatives. The term (as used in America today) has come to encapsulate the whole idea that people should "feel good about themselves" no matter what. Thus we have teachers who don't want to use red pens to mark up a kid's writing assignment because it might make little Joey feel bad about himself. We don't want to play any games where somebody might lose; think of the baseball games where the grown-ups forbid children from keeping score so that "there are no losers." (As IF the kids don't keep track of the score in their heads!)

Problem is,
that's not what self-esteem is really about.

Several years ago, I was preparing a lecture/workshop for the state homeschool conference on the topic of homeschooling preschoolers. Of course, every book you look at on the topic of Educating Young Children is primarily about self-esteem. But I was surprised by some of the research from the 60s when self-esteem first became a popular idea.

Self-esteem is not a simple "good feeling about yourself." Self-esteem is actually the recognition that hard work pays off. In other words, if you're struggling with math facts, self-esteem is the knowledge that studying and memorizing and practicing will help you learn your factoids well. If you work hard at doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, the reward is praise from Mom and a nice clean counter-top and non-sticky floor.

The original point of self-esteem was EFFORT PAYS OFF.

And the opposite of self-esteem is not "feeling bad about yourself." Actually, the opposite of self-esteem is knowing that no matter how hard you work, no matter how much effort you put in, no matter how many times you try, that you cannot change the outcome of something.

It's like the animals in psychological studies who were in cages and were given an electric shock or some other punishment every time they crossed over into the other half of the cage. Finally, when the shocks ended and the animal was free to go to the other half of the cage where the food dish was, the poor critter just stayed in the small portion of the cage, away from the food dish, because he knew it was useless to try to cross over that line. Even though he was safe, the dog had learned it was useless to try to improve his situation. THAT is what "poor self-esteem" is really about.

I don't know if anybody else cares about this. I just thought it was fascinating because some of what's said by some in the "self-esteem camp" seemed so obvious and real and sensible. But some of it was feel-good mumbo-jumbo gobbledygook. Thus I could never make sense in my mind of what was right and wrong about the concept of self-esteem. But finding out what self-esteem really is (and isn't) helped sort those things out in my mind.