The Perils of Self-Esteem

Instead of pushing children toward genuine achievement so they know they are competent and capable and are thus properly proud of themselves, the psychiatric concept is to tell the child he has accomplished something whether he has or not. According to this view, he must be shielded from failure or any awareness of failure so his fragile sense of self can be preserved.

Professor of sociology Frank Furedi refutes this: �According to many leading educationalists, the challenge facing schools is to raise children�s self-esteem.� Yet, �there is not even any evidence that such �solutions� work � there seems to be no attempt to measure or account for the resources spent on efforts to raise people�s self-esteem and �empower� them. What the therapeutic approach does is encourage a mood of emotionalism, where everyone is always stressed, bullied or traumatized.�

Educator Alan Larson tells us, �Children who are told they made it when they didn�t absolutely despise adults. They think they are total fools. And when their whole life is like that, they become apathetic about it, because the whole world is crazy. They feel bad about hiding the truth (that they didn�t make it) and they withdraw from the area and it produces a complete disassociation of the kid from the subject of education because it is a lie. And kids know that the only thing that causes self-esteem is confidence and production.�

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