The So-called Self Esteem Movement

All that self-esteem building stuff doesn't work, I had 6 years of it, and am more depressed than thosearound me that didn't have it (maybe I'm just made to be depressed, I dunno), as for condioning, again, nothings worked on me, I still intend to avoid all people that tell me what to do (not to extremes though).

forsakenwayfarer,

There's two decades of research that indicates that children with high self-esteen
are less likely to particpate in dangerous behaviors, post better test scores and are more
likely to enter college. Please see, Education Weekly archives, the journal Prevention Science
and Character Education Partnership case studies. Furthermore, self-concept has come a long way
since the demonization of self-esteem during the late 80's. Why don't you take a hard look at the
Theory of Triadic influcences. JAMA will have an excellent article on TTI sometime in 04'.

The distinction that I haven't seen made here is at what age is the concept of Self-Esteem most appropriate
and effective. Everything I've read indicates that early Elemenatary settings (k-5) is the most effective.

[Edited on 29-1-2004 by kukla]

It's not that children need new schools and fancy shmnacy surrounds to boost their self esteem...

It's the liberal morons who are at the top that aren't secure in themselves so they feel they need bigger better office spaces, a new building, new this new that so they can go around bragging to their friends and such that they have this and they have that.

But remember "they all doin it for the shildren"



[Edited on 29-1-2004 by TrueLies]

The idea of Self Esteem is true and is backed up by a number of studies. So don't think it is some dumb idea from those "damn dirty libs"

I do however think that the scope, or more appropriately the execution, of this program is faulty.

Self Esteem is due to accomplishment and acceptance. This is not accomplished by simply overloading a child with positive reinforcement.

Parenting has much to do with Self Esteem.

A more effective plan might be to educate parents. On the school end, it might be better to have more competative situations, but have a large number of different types so more kids will have the chance to succeed.

The question of this thread seems to be : Do school programs aimed at improving students' self-esteem produce results?

Rather than speculate, let's see if anyone has actually investigated this.... gimme a second.....



"Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles?" by Baumeister, Roy F., Department of Psychology, Florida State University. The article appears in the journal "Psychological Science in the Public Interest"....

Quick Abstract:

"Self-esteem has become a household word. Teachers, parents, therapists, and others have focused efforts on boosting self-esteem, on the assumption that high self-esteem will cause many positive outcomes and benefits-an esteem assumption that is critically evaluated in this review.... "

The abstract doesn't tell a whole lot, but the author was actually an advisor of mine before he left for FSU. Actually, a lot of research aimed at the construct of "self-esteem" was done at the institution. I would get this article, but it's not carried by the library where I work.

Anyways, "self-esteem" exists. That is, it's something that you can measure, and something that can change over time. As an above poster mentioned, self-esteem is related to an individual's ability to regulate their own behavior, interpret their experiences in a way that enhances their self-image or reinforces positive aspects of their self-image, and it's also tied to an ability to resist group influence, although not as strongly.

However, self-esteem isn't really distributed normally on a bell curve. Actually, the majority of us have "high self-esteem." Younger individuals on the lower end, who have very low self-esteem, may be at risk for failure in school, getting involved in drugs, and being involved in other "risky" behaviors (like sex at a very young age, etc.).

The self-esteem movement was created from the (faulty, imho) interpretation of this pattern that low self-esteem = low grades/success, high self-esteem = good grades/success. There is no data that I know of showing that self-esteem the cause of academic achievement, only that there is a correlation between low achievement and low self-esteem. Even this is confounded by socioeconomic factors, parenting factors, and who knows what else.

These programs are created with the best intentions, but I don't think they are based in enough research. With more critical evaluations of these programs and the movement itself, we will either see these programs go away, get less funding, or improved.

Of course, I'm biased. I'd like to see more arguments/data showing that self-esteem "programs" at the older age levels are capable of increasing self-esteem. I'm not saying that this data doesn't exist, just that I don't know where it is.




[Edited on 18-2-2004 by phaedrusxxx]

[Edited on 18-2-2004 by phaedrusxxx]

at my high school of 1300 something kids the teachers picked like 20 of us to be on some stupid student advisory board. im the only freshman, so my ideas are usually shot down, but i know what they are doing. its really....stupid. thes self esteem movements. jostens, a yearbook company, is hosting a thing called "renaisance" (spelled wrong no doubt) in lots of schools all over the country. its a self run program to get kids to really try in school. they have things like academic pep rallies, praising kids for improvement and stuff. this is my response: honestly, no one gives a sh*t about school spirit. why are the pep rallies dead? because no one cares. they dont care about sports, they dont care about their school beating their rival, they dont care about being the top school, and they arent going to care about getting a ribbon for improving their GPA .5 points. god knows i dont, and no one else at my school does. i dont think anyone else does either.