Self-Esteem for Dummies

The United States spends more per pupil on education than any other country in the world. So how is this investment paying off? Well, the answer depends on what you think the point of education is. If you are of the old school that believes in academic excellence, then our money is buying us the dumbest kids in the civilized world. Year after year, American students rank at or near the bottom on international achievement tests. Amazingly, however, when asked to assess their performance, after taking these tests, our schoolchildren are always sure that they had done very well indeed.

That they feel great about who they are and that their pride is not marred by any sense of harsh, albeit objective, reality, is good news for the nation's educators. From their point of view, the investment in education is paying big dividends, though, of course, more money is desperately needed to accomplish even greater wonders. For if you are in the ed biz, there is no higher goal than building self-esteem?"doing bad and feeling good," as one wag put it.

Domestic test scores are equally dismal, or again, if you are in the teaching business, our children are no longer victims of an intellectual and educational oppression. Results released this April by the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that reading scores for fourth-graders have not risen in eight years and that, in fact, the scores of the worst readers have declined precipitously. Despite years of additional funding for new reading programs, 37 percent of pupils score "below-basic competency levels." In plain English, 37 percent can't read. Among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers are 63 percent and 58 percent respectively. When it comes to elementary and high school math and science, the U.S. Commission on National Security considers our kids' ignorance so appalling that it calls it a threat to national security, which should be addressed immediately to protect America from "distinctly new dangers."

Teachers, for their part, do not believe there is a crisis. What they do believe is that we should overcome our Eurocentric emphasis on competition and examinations, all of which impair the psychological well-being of those left behind. We must build self-esteem, and academic achievement will follow. That it does not, or that it is just as possible that self-esteem comes from a job well done, daunts teachers not a bit. What animates them are performance disparities among ethnic groups that can be remedied not by demanding excellence of all, but by raising group consciousness of some.

Homework, too, is injurious to the self-esteem of those who prefer goofing off to studying. Its detrimental effects are set out in a book that is electrifying the educational industry, The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children and Limits Learning. The authors admit that the real goal behind the movement to abolish merit is not self-esteem but the desire to stamp out free enterprise, which rewards talent and hard work. They argue that "the current stress on homework and the long school day may be another, and increasingly problematic, form of the preparation demanded by our corporate and consumer society?a way to accustom the student worker to long working hours. Not only is homework itself a form of psychological preparation, but both its form and content seem designed to send the cardinal message of today's business civilization: This is a competitive world whose purpose lies in endless production."

But it is not only academic competition that agitates the ideological juices of the social engineers. Playground games are equally suspect and in some schools, line dancing and bowling, e.g., are replacing competitive sports. (Presumably though, our future leaders will continue to wear protective helmets, knee or shoulder pads while engaging in these new activities, because, well, you can never be too safe.) Dodge ball, the game in which players stand in a circle and throw a ball at the person in the middle who then tries to dodge it or is out, is also verboten. "We take the position that dodge ball is not an appropriate instructional activity because it eliminates children and it does not respect the needs of less-skilled children," says the executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

Less skilled or not, self-esteem among American youngsters is already elevated, especially when compared to the modest self-evaluations given by the more academically accomplished students in other countries. Why then worry about it? Because focusing on merit instead would require that teachers also excel in their jobs and admit that the feeling of self-worth, as opposed to self-delusion, comes from genuine accomplishment that does include talent, hard work and humility. There is no question that many who sell children on the idea that "it does not matter what you do, but who you are," mean well.

Nevertheless, they are on the side of those who are waging a deliberate campaign to destroy our Western tradition that holds that social advancement depends mainly on one's ability and energy, not on group membership. Obviously, more than investment in education is at stake.