blogs.kxly.com

Has the self-esteem movement run its course yet, because if it hasn’t, we’re creating yet another generation of young people who don’t understand that mediocrity isn’t worthy of an award.

For some time, in the interest of preventing injury to personal self esteem, parents and educators invested in what amounts to a phony version of reality. Underperformance was ignored, and their little darlings were given ribbons for everything. These kids were encouraged to play sports, though they had aptitude for athletics, and they were given accolades, even when they dropped the ball or came in last.

Elementary school teachers didn’t want to crush fragile little egos or discourage creativity, so they often didn’t correct spelling errors, and thus classroom walls are adorned with many examples of grammatically incorrect work, or math papers where the students didn’t arrive at correct answers, but were rewarded anyway just for trying. As these students progressed through school, their mediocre academic performance was not challenged. They grew up with a false confidence, thinking that they were actually competent, when indeed they were not.

Then at last, in the real world, they discovered the hard way, what logically could have been anticipated: they had misplaced self esteem, but nowhere near acceptable skills.

In the real world winning matters. There is no reward for trying. Employers only reward results. The best and the brightest move up. Many young adults were sheltered from this brutal truth growing up, and their expectations are therefore far beyond their skills. Dealing with the reality that just showing up is not an achievement, is tough for them. For some, it is almost impossible to bear. The self-esteem era probably has done more damage than good in our society. Some hard lessons in life are best learned without sugar coating. We’ve always known that, but social engineers often forget.

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