Posted on 03/01/2007 7:00:19 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 just watched the Southpark episode where the teacher got a sex change operation and then was furious to find out he couldn't get pregnant. Then Kyle's father gets a dolphinoplasty to become a dolphin. Then Kyle gets a negroplasty to become a tall black kid so he can make the basketball team (the coach has previously told him jews can't play basketball.) They find out that the dolphin dad can't swim, and the kid can't play basketball without his knees exploding. It's all appearances. It doesn't change the reality.
And when we get to the retirement home, they'll make GREAT caretakers. Oy vay......
I think lots of young adults/teenagers are self absorbed but some of your examples are bad.
First, kids never being on a bus. There is no way I would let my kids ride these days. We live in San Jose, California, and it is way too dangerous for them to ride on a bus. When they were little, their school district had bus service from near our house to school. My kids rode that bus. However, then the district changed it so the bus stop was over a mile away and the pick up time was 2 1/2 hours before school (6:30am). My kids were 6 & 8 at the time, and the school was only 3 1/2 miles away. I preferred us waking up at 7:30 and me driving them to school.
Two hours of homework for little kids is too much school work! Maybe in high school, 2 hours is okay but not 2 hours for elementary school kids. (I never had more than 1 hour of homework until high school back in the 70s.)
As far as backpacks go, lots of kids are having problems with heavy packpacks. My niece severely injurred her back when she was in high school. (I never had to carry so many books to and from school.)
I think kids never going to Church/Synagogue has a lot to do with their self-esteem problems. If kids know that they are sinful, and they know that God is greater than themselves, then it helps them to have a better perspective.
Parents are also self-absorbed these days and send kids to daycare all day long. Parents then can't role model good behavior. Simple things like making cookies for the new neighbor or helping a sick friend.
" There are many of us who are trying to make a difference in a broken system. "
Thank you! I believe that taking back the education system, or at the very least providing strong alternatives, is something we must do if we are going to right this ship. Thank you for holding the fort in your classroom everyday, proving to your students that there is another side to every story, and that they will be better off if they learn to look for it, and then decide for themselves.
tatt
I think we're talking about YOUR kids, Spikey.
l have two Granddaughters who are exactly what you wrote about.My Daughter has kept them in a cocoon.The older girl is in University and has never been on a city bus.lt isn't safe for her to travel anywhere alone.The girls have never done a chore.Even putting their clothes away after Mom has done the laundry is just too much for them.l don't know how they will ever be able to take care of themselves.Another thing, they have never been critized.l can't ever imagine either of them in the workforce.The first negative thing spoken to them will have them in tears.l get so frustrated with my Daughter but there is nothing l can do.The damage began when the girls were young children .
You're doing the RIGHT thing....good luck. Your son will be much stronger in life because of it!
My friend called the school and asked them why they assigned the kids homework that they couldn't possibly do without help of their parent. The answer was "we think it fosters quality time between parent and child." She answered that the time she spent helping her child with her schoolwork was NOT quality time, it was tense, frustrated time, and besides how DARE they try to manipulate her and run her life through her child! Didn't do any good.
Ha....I taught my grandson how to play ping pong....he started when he was about 4.....he got REALLY good and could almost beat me by the time he was 10....and I'm VERY good for a "girl"......I NEVER let him win.....I told him I was his COACH! I know I helped him, considering his mother and her child raising ways (My DIL - long story).
If I'm not mistaken, narcissism is a mental disorder mentioned in the DSM IV. Besides narcissism, our society is breeding sociopaths like flies.
Yeah, but we didn't make your music suck so bad.
Before we all dump on and write off this generation (of which I am not a part) we need to remember our airmen, sailors, soldiers and marines leaning into our enemies as we speak.
I am willing to bet they do not suffer from an over inflated sense of self and lack of humility. They are the next generation of leaders. The rest will be mugged by reality at some point. The USA isn’t finished by a long shot.
Actually this generation is better than mine in many respects, I don’t see massive student participation in anti-war rallies. It’s the blue hairs from the sixties.
Schools and it's minions are not to be argued or trifled with. I teach my children that in general those institutions are full of morons. That they should do only what is required of them by the morons. You should take your childrens minds to a higher ground, and teach them what the intended purposes of schools are and what the reality is. Schools and it's employees can control everything but the free will of your child to choose. The real teaching should be done by you - and that is teaching the child to learn on his own, reading books about history, getting them into Computer programming, mathematical tutoring. Your kid can learn more quickly and more adeptly if he knows this. This idea of one size fits all learning and cramming kids through a broken system with moron mentors is complete buffoonery.
There's alot of good ones in your generation too. I know quite a few of them and some have their heads on straighter than I did at that age, and I was a pretty serious person.
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