Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9308010018
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For years conventional wisdom has said yes: More self-confidence will help all students, but particularly girls, members of minority groups and, increasingly, gay and lesbian youth who see their sense of self diminished by an indifferent public school system.
But the self-esteem movement that began with such high expectations in the 1980s is running aground. Teachers in many public schools are praising student accomplishments so indiscriminately that such praise has become meaningless. The result, some education analysts warn, is that true achievement is losing out to mediocrity.
"In some instances, you accept work you shouldn't accept because there is the fear that the kids will not feel good," said Elzeria Barnes, a science teacher in middle school and high school in Westchester.
Other teachers are more blunt. "It's a crock," said a middle-school teacher in Albuquerque, N.M., who asked not to be identified. "It has lessened the appeal of hard work among students."
Some teachers have applauded students simply for turning in homework. Others accept work that even students know is lacking, which can have the opposite effect on a child's self-worth.
The push to increase self-esteem has also helped sustain the trend toward grade inflation. In one Albuquerque middle school, teachers tried to start a new academic honor society, using as the cutoff for membership a 3.5 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale. They found that two-thirds of the school's 600 students were eligible - about half of them in special education.
So they raised the average to 3.8, but that excluded the very students - hard workers who spent long hours studying - the teachers wanted to acknowledge. One flabbergasted teacher who was involved in organizing the program said the grade inflation was a direct result of the school's self-esteem program.
"We all believe in self-esteem," said the teacher, who asked not to be identified because the experience so divided the teachers. "Where we disagree is how to give students self-esteem and at what price." The honor society idea was eventually scrapped.
The idea appears to work where it is based on test results. In Detroit, four all-black public academies were established two years ago and the teachers were told that part of their mission was to bolster students' self-esteem.
The staff stresses the relationship between self-confidence and exemplary achievement, between self-esteem and hard work, which city school officials say has led to stronger student performances on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program and the California Achievement Test.
The Detroit schools achieved this through more than just fuzzy feel-good praise. If a student receives a D on an essay because of grammatical and spelling errors, for instance, the teacher returns the paper, with encouragement that the student can do better. The students also are taught respect; they are expected to be quiet when another teacher or administrator enters the classroom. Expectations are an important component, says Rebie Kingston, director of the office of guidance for Detroit Public Schools.
"Expectations play a great role in self-esteem," Kingston said. And teachers must make the connection that students' self-worth rises in relation to legitimate achievement based on goals just a bit higher than their reach but attainable through hard work.
Many educators often confused praise with encouragement. "Where teachers often go astray is, the praise is not congruent with the effort the child is putting forth," said Carole Kennedy, principal at the New Haven Elementary School in Columbia, Mo.
"If you have a little boy who reads his lesson and then the teacher lavishes praise upon him, that doesn't mean anything to the little boy, who says, `Gee, that wasn't hard. Does she think I'm not smart?' "
Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, agrees. "You can't simply achieve self-esteem by using the label or by rewarding any effort regardless of its quality or merit," he said, adding that one without the other "frankly does acknowledge mediocrity."
Some experts say teachers, battered by public criticism and working for little money given their responsibilities, lack self-esteem themselves and are in a poor position to give students something they themselves lack.
by CNB