Are we doing the right thing with our emphasis on self-esteem?

I was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland over the Martin Luther King holiday. The reason for the trip was to have Christmas with my wife's relatives, as it is difficult to visit during the actual holiday. The MLK weekend saw everyone home except one.

My point? While I was at my brother-in-law's home I picked up his Washington Post and noticed a front page article titled, "In schools, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, finer-tuned praise."

The title alone caused me to jump up and down. As you might have guessed, I never believed that telling a student how good they were would lead to them being educated.

The article noted that the students who received praise were hesitant to take on any risk, because risks could potentially hurt their self-esteem position. The nonsense went to say that teachers told students they had done a great job, but they failed to explain why the students succeeded. So, the students really did not understand what they exactly had done to deserve the praise they had accumulated.

We now know that lauding students does not get the job done.

A number of things have emerged from this new style of teaching described in the Washington Post article. Students and teachers are learning that one learns the most from one's mistakes and failures. Students are learning that this applies to both education and sports, where we currently give everyone a trophy.

Hopefully this movement will reset the way we educate students, and maybe we will see more confident students who realize what it takes to really learn.