BTW, as a fervent student of the English language, I will add this:
Posted on 12/11/2012 6:03:06 AM PST by shortstop
The chickens have come home to roost.
The first generation of students swaddled in the insanity of the self-esteem movement have emerged on the scene as arrogant, self-absorbed twits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and self-importance.
In short, they’ve been spoiled. Potentially, they’ve been ruined.
The idiocy of social engineering in the classroom is again bearing catastrophic results.
Here’s how we know. A group of five university professors has evaluated more than 16,000 personality profiles of college students gathered over the last 24 years. What they’ve discovered is that today’s young people have dramatically different self-concepts than the two generations which preceded them.
And the differences aren’t good.
Today’s college students are monumentally more narcissistic. That means they worship themselves. That means they’ve been told that they’re special so many times that they’ve come to believe it. In blunt terms, they think their crap doesn’t stink.
But it does. Possibly more than most.
Because one of the hallmarks of an inflated self-concept is personal failure. People who think they are superior have an uncanny tendency to be inferior. Their sense of worth is so high they have no motivation to work and improve themselves. When you think the world is yours on a silver platter, it never occurs to you that you’ve got to get off your backside and earn anything.
The study shows that children born after 1982 have a unrealistically inflated self-concepts. So high is their estimation of themselves, in fact, that they are fully narcissistic – a trait that is somewhere in the gray area between a character flaw and a personality disorder. Narcissism is such an unhealthy aberration that it is almost a mental illness.
And the self-esteem movement of the 1990s has made it epidemic.
Unfortunately, the education industry has become so divorced from reality that for several years the conventional wisdom in American classrooms has been that children – particularly poor and minority children – fail to achieve because they have negative self-concepts. The way to correct that, the argument has gone, is to pump up their self-concepts through self-esteem building. That typically translated to unrealistic and unearned praise for students, and the removal of all negative feedback and consequences from the classroom. That’s why grades are artificially high, everybody gets a smiley face and teachers don’t use red ink any more.
Schools seem incapable of recognizing that true self-worth comes from doing what’s right and from legitimate achievement. Not praise passed out like candy, but genuine achievement coming as the consequence of significant effort. You earn worth, it isn’t given out for free.
The lunacy of the education reformers was matched by the leniency of the troubled homes. Mom and dad have forgotten how to be mom and dad. Children were waited on hand and foot with no obligations of their own to work or assist the family. Permissive parenting and failed educating led to a bumper crop of egocentric creeps.
And that’s going to hurt.
Because narcissists typically fail. They fail in their responsibility to be good citizens and they fail in their responsibility to be good spouses and parents.
Being a good citizen and being part of a family requires selflessness. They require putting your own interests second to the interests of something larger and more important than yourself. To the narcissist, there is nothing more important than yourself.
That leads to employment and self-reliance difficulties, and to significant challenges to the ability to maintain a marriage and raise a family.
Which bites society hard. Society needs this crop of young adults – like every crop of young adults – to assume its responsibilities as the taxpayers and the parents of the future. Each rising tide needs to shoulder its burdens and leave its mark. Failure to do that can have huge sociological consequences.
This crop has been weakened in its abilities to bear off those responsibilities by the warped worldview its education and upbringing gave it.
So what can be done?
The self-esteem crap can end. Though it is so entrenched and unquestioned, and protected by political correctness, that it is unlikely to go anywhere.
Young people must learn – with the help of others – that the world doesn’t revolve around them, and that believing it does is the quickest way to a miserable and disappointing life.
The social and religious values of the United States – and of decent nations all around the world – teach selflessness and service. Those values must be re-enthroned and the self-worship of the narcissism-breeding self-esteem movement must end.
I’ve often thought the rise in school shootings is largely due to the fake self esteem movement. These kids can’t handle stress or disappointment and we’ve basically raised a generation of sociopaths
Turning OFF the TV would be a good place to start.... lots of negative and unwholesome ideas streaming into your household, there!
They’d have a hard time outdoing the Boomers, the kings of narcissism. At any rate, this generation is like any generation, you have your good and bad ones. The narcissism he speaks of is much, much less here in the midwest. I work with alot of good, responsible young kids who are just as good stock as anyone.
“arrogant, self-absorbed twits with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and self-importance.”
This sounds like a pithy description of POTUS!
Educators--as a group--are the stupidest people on the planet. My wife was a teacher, and a darn good one, but those are few and far between.
On the other hand, the people in the 22-30 age group who are working hard are doing fantastically well. There’s very little competition.
At least the Boomers have something they can legitimately claim--our economy exploded with them working. These kids can only claim more gov't handouts.
Almost spell a word right on a test? Get a passing grade and an “attaboy” from the teacher.
Go 0-10 during the football season? Get a trophy exactly the same as those received by the champions of the league.
Lie and demagogue anyone who does not agree with your perverted Marxist-loving political and world view? Become pResident of the United States. Behold the libtard nation... an entire generation of arrogant ignoramuses, convinced of their "brilliance" and "ability" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And now, apparently, old enough to vote for the poster boy of narcissism...
“Failure to do that can have huge sociological consequences.”
I really hate this. We’re concerned about the problems of society, not the problems of sociologists.
I’ve often attributed my youth obesity to my conservatism and successes. I had very few friends, spent most of my time reading and studying, and even through college, I spent my life giving my time to charities, volunteering, and generally living a life of service. I received praise for my hard work instead of being praised for doing nothing. I worked for everything I had, and I still have a lot of it because I take care of my things.
I remember when I was 10, in 1990, they were starting this “Positive Actions” program in my elementary school. They focused on us praising our peers, focusing on positives, never putting down anyone or anything. I could tell my 5th grade teachers, both in their 50s, didn’t believe a bit of the garbage they were required to shovel, but the kids ate it up. I asked my language teacher why we didn’t “do our words” (vocabulary) anymore and why we spent so little time on reading, and she said if I wanted to spend more time doing that, I could stay after school. Even in elementary school, I would stay for an hour or more after school to work with my teachers on learning.
I find now, as an adult, that children are starved for education. They are literally bored in school! My 10 year old cousin is listless and seems to be vacant of anything resembling intellect. I ask him what he learns in school, and he just tells me nothing important. When I work on my uncle’s computer or try to fix some electronics around their house, that kid is glued to my hip. He’s vibrant and wants to learn. That tells me that schools, anymore, are just daycares for these kids. They’re not teaching them squat, and that’s disgusting.
true self-worth comes from doing what’s right and from legitimate achievement. Not praise passed out like candy, but genuine achievement coming as the consequence of significant effort. You earn worth, it isn’t given out for free.Granted, it's more an objective than a plan for action, but you've got to have agreement on the former before you can do the latter, anyway.
Obviously you’ve forgotten the 70’s. The Boomers started working when they finally realized that money was cool and smokin’ doobie and banging Moon Unit Star Child didn’t pay the rent. Then like all things they went to the extreme and overdid it.
I've got no problem with that, to a point. That is, for very young kids, it's better to focus on effort and participation rather than worrying about records and statistics (although, by, say, age 7, the kids are well aware of who's winning and losing, despite no official scoring). But at least in my neck of the woods, that goes away at age 9 or so (at least for baseball and soccer, which are what my eldest focuses on). Then, scores and standings are kept, only the top teams make the playoffs, and there are winners and losers.
Teach him well my friend, it might be the only education he gets.
I love these kids today. There are plenty of good ones to go with the bad ones, you just have to get away from the coasts and the urban centers to see it.
Not all Boomers were hippies.
“People who think they are superior have an uncanny tendency to be inferior.”
The line of wisdom from this article.
Pair it with another great line “success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” and you understand the problem.
People that are concerned about their abilities work harder.
I haven’t had TV since 2006!
Its such an eerie feeling when I’m watching raw, unfiltered TV, complete with commercials. Very foreign.
Yes, there is hope. I am 29.
The "Gods of the Copybook Headings" will sort this out in their own good time.
Thank you, Mr. Kipling.
Just like not all of today’s kids are what this article describes.
Oh baloney.
There’ve been plenty of narcissistic jerks in every generation. And said jerks have never been more so that at about this age. This is like the whining of the ancient Romans and probably Egyptians that the younger generation is a bunch of spoiled, lazy punks.
“”The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”
-Socrates, 5th century BC “
It *ALL* comes down to the parents.
Plus, as happened with plenty of “my” generation, a few years in the real world will straighten ‘em right up. All but the truly stupid ones, anyway and the stupid ones are stupid be it ancient Sumaria and will be in the 25th century.
I immediately recognized it, and check, and yep, it's Bob. I was a native Rochesterian, and he's better on the radio. His message, when he is writing, is still stellar.
But his style sucks.
Because he writes like this.
In short sentence fragments.
Which mostly annoys me.
A lot.
Around Halloween one of my co-workers had her daughter (1st grade, maybe 2nd) at work after school and I asked her what she had learned in school that day. She said they learned about recycling pumpkins.
And the Greek states FELL. First to Alexander in Socrates time, and then to Rome.
wait until America has her back to the wall in a grim and terrible World War—a war we can lose and face slavery from a tyrannical foe. Then the young people of today will be forced to pick up their burden, rededicate themselves and rise to the occasion. It will happen—but before we can learn to win—lots of folks are going to die.
To hear that.
I didn't know.
I'll try to avoid it.
In the future.
;^)
(But your confident optimism is a good and important thing.)
The problem in America?
The biggest problem?
The problem associated with editorial writers?
Bob Lonsberry.
Because he writes like this.
Not on every sentence, mind you. Sometimes, he will lapse back into a more normal writing style, and string sentences together wirth better form — even creating a whole paragraph, amazingly!
But then he goes back to this.
Because he’s Bob Lonsberry.
Too funny..
He demonstrates part of the problem...
Short quick sound bite sentences, make it more palatable for his readers, which have short attention spans.
Me thinks the Japanese and Asian communities, in general, do not fit into his thesis. Abundance of self esteem does not seem to be part of their value system.
In general, I do agree with him..
I like this short sentence thingie do-bob..Cool !
In the company I work for employee evals are rated:
Exceeds expectations
Meets expectations
Fails to meet some expectations
Fails to meet most expectations
Our manuals stats clearly that Meets is a good rating and and that Exceeds should only be noted when employee rises way above and beyond yada yada...
The offshore goobers (a country over between Pakistan and Thailand) and the under 25’s get angry when they do not get Exceeds in every category.
I tell my own kids on scales from 1-10 I never give a 10 unless you were absolutely perfect and a 9 is almost as hard. If I give you a 7-8 on something (like a sports performance) that was good.
I can’t speak to Hesiod, but Socrates and Peter the Hermit were actually deadly accurate, and should not be dismissed as simply proving every culture feels this way:
Immediately following Socrates’ statement, the Athenian Republic fell to a coup. Democracy was re-established, but Plato was citing him in a warning that this democracy could not last, and he was correct.
Peter the Hermit led the “People’s Crusade” against Islam, but was dismayed at what rabble he had attracted. (Although, I’m not familiar with the exact quote, and the date it’s attributed to is about a century after Peter the Hermit’s death.)
Very few boomers were hippies, so don’t over generalize. I and very many like me have been working at least since we were 16, served in the military, many as a career, educated ourselves and have worked hard to try to give our kids a solid start in life.
Unfortunately, many (not all) of our kids go for the National Socialist Democrat Party give aways and vote democrat. Not the way they were raised and many are hard workers and responsible parents; they just don’t understand history, what socialism is, or the Constitution and the freedoms that are being removed.
Yeah, many of the boomers who were hippies and socialist agitators are now in high positions in government and industry. They had the time, the family money, the notoriety, the sponsors to worm their way up the ladders while the rest of us worked to make a better life.
We never considered ourselves to be special, at least not like some of our worthless co-boomers and many of our offspring but of course we will be blamed for the sea of $h!t that they and their democrat stars create for us all.
When it all falls apart, remember that your generation voted for this in large numbers.
Short recap for those not familiar with the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” .... it doesn’t end well.
The poem was published a year after the end of The Great War.
I tell my own kids on scales from 1-10 I never give a 10 unless you were absolutely perfect and a 9 is almost as hard. If I give you a 7-8 on something (like a sports performance) that was good.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
It must be an ‘age’ thing.
In ‘my Navy’ of the mid 50’s-mid 60’s, while a 4.0 was perfect for evals (believe there were 5 categories) and the ‘good working types’ would get a 3.6 or so (average) while the ‘kiss arses were around 3.8’ 3.9/4.0 meant someone was lying, either the person doing the grading or the subject was an outstanding kiss arse.
Fast forward to my local VFW in the 90’s, some young wave (E5 or E6) was bemoaning the fact she ONLY got 4.0 and was afraid she wouldn’t get promoted....Just talking to her and from her outward uniform appearance, it was hard to imagine here getting 3.0’s etc....
Actually very few of us were. And a miniscule number of us attend Woodstock which may surprise many in the news media. I was working construction in Indiana during the summer of 69 and didn’t even know about Woodstock until I got to college.
Parenting 101 is to tell your children that they’re crap (because, initially, they are), and make them prove they’re not crap, while still letting them know they’re loved. It always works.
Laz,
We have not been formally introduced but your reputation precedes you with a degree of aplomb and bombast, an overflowing cup of mendacity and more than a smidgen of licentious fever all wrapped in a high dudgeon of estimability. How do you do it? Curious readers want to know.
Lou
And I would say don’t generalize yourself about the youth vote.
My generation is largely conservative/libertarian, at least 50/50. I don’t think the generation behind us votes as liberal as you think. Most I deal with are fairly libertarian. At least in the midwest anyway. If you’re in an urban area or the coast, I imagine they vote no more or less liberal than preceding generations.
Hinge it to a goal.
You want to get into college? Don’t write your essay all about yourself and how wonerful you are. Gear it to the educators who will be reading it. They like kids who love learning. Tell them what you want to learn.
Get the kids’ heads to turn around that way if you can.
Or the same with getting a job: Don’t talk about your qualifications and your paltry experience. Tell them what you know about their company and how it’s the place you want to work and why.
Kids are taught that it’s all about them for so long that they find it hard to make the switch. When you’re looking for something, a college education or a job, you’ve got to turn it around.
My generation is largely conservative/libertarian, the youth vote showed itself to be largely democrat. I know what my kids, their friends in the 20-35 yo groups believe in and it is not conservative by a long shot when it comes to how they vote. I also see it in the older student (25-40) population where I teach.
Too many potential conservative voters in those groups as well as my own generation simply did not vote for whatever ignorant reasons. I didn’t care much for Mitt or the way he handled the campaign but he was a far better choice than four more years of the would-be dicatator.
Agree completely. I am talking about kids that are 11-12 years old, who know what the scores of games are and, to their credit, often comment on the fact that the “trophies” mean nothing.
Even when they were 5-6 years old, my sons and daughter knew what the score was at the end of their games; again, the libtard utopia of “equal outcomes” thwarted by human nature and reality...
Simple. Spend 12 years on a website, consistently and obsessively posting, day in and day out, like a twitchy overnervous sweating mole-rat who's overdosed on crack and high-caffiene-content coffee.
11 years will not cut it. It has to be 12.
BTW, as a fervent student of the English language, I will add this:
I don't recycle pumpkins. I re-use them.
I process them through a thermal-mechanical device, which renders the pumpkin into a brown slurry. The brown slurry is then processed with other biological materials in a different thermal-mechanical process to a solidified brown cake. That brown cake is processed through an animate biological re-forming system, then flushed down a pipe into an underground bio-degradation system, from which it emerges as an aqueous solution of nitrates. That solution is finally disposed of in the environment, where is supports the growth of various species of the family Poaceae.
That depends on your POV. Vultures, rats, and cockroaches like terror and slaughter ...
bm
Laz,
I know you did/would. I anticipated your erudition and perspicacious talents.
Actually I’ve been around about 14 years. I signed up about 6 months into the birth of FR but lost my initial login info, changed it, whatever.
I was Amos the Prophet for years but decided with help from Jim to take off the mask. Now I am me.
I enjoy your posts and appreciate your candor.
As for a reputation I am not exactly reserved but have not caught the wind that you have found.
Lou
Glad to meet you after all these years, sir!
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