Moral Adults?

(CAUTION: This post is obscenely long...)

So in my Moral Adults: Moral Children class, we spent this week talking about self-esteem in public education and in parenting. Basically, the professor was making the point that somewhere in the last generation or so, parents and teachers have become so worried about making their kids feel good about themselves that no one is paying attention to whether or not they're becoming good people or getting good grades.

For some reason the argument in pop psychology and modern education seems to be "Make kids feel good about themselves and they'll learn better and become good people." But it's not true. Children from Asian countries are more likely to rate themselves lower on self-esteem measures than American students, and yet they have the highest rates of achievement. And, many criminals and bullies have very high self-esteem, which didn't seem to do them any favors in the realm of morality.

The idea of self-esteem education is not a new observation in the Dickerson family; ask my siblings or parents and you'll hear what we refer to as "self-esteem school." Using that term often also means Megan or I will remind everyone of her history project in middle school, which was a last-minute crap job, and yet the teacher gave her an A+++, or some such ridiculous mark. Self-esteem school. We also liked to jokingly refer to BYU-Idaho as such. Like the mother who recently asked Cromwell Middle School to abolish their honor roll because it marginalizes the kids who don't get put on it, parents are so worried about how their kids feel about themselves, that they're not paying attention to whether or not they actually deserve the praise they receive.

The professor argued, with research, that in fact, when kids receive empty universal praise from adults (like "you're great!" "Way to go!") they report feelings of indifference later in adolescence. They may feel good about themselves, but they've also learned that praise from adults doesn't mean anything. And they've learned that they can do no wrong. They've learned that they don't have to do good to feel good about themselves or to earn praise. They've learned that there's no need to put effort into developing any sort of moral compass because people will tell you you're great no matter what.

He also said a lot of things about how parents need to be parents and not friends to their kids; how parents need to encourage children to be good for being good's sake; not because it will make them happy (indeed, being good or standing up for what's right often won't make a kid happy; it will make him lonely.)

Anyway. I'm rambling, but the lecture was really interesting.

The professor likes to give us scenarios to think about. This week it was the following:

"You are the coach of an eighth grade traveling soccer team. You have told parents and kids that you're very interested in promoting players' "character", but you haven't defined explicitly what that means. You have worked to create a sense of "team" among the players, and all players play roughly equal minutes. But in part because you don't play your best players much more than your weaker players, your team has been struggling. The team has won 2 games and lost 4. Michael, a parent of one of your best players, Katie, calls you. He says that Katie is very frustrated that she is not playing more and that the team is losing. He also says he is frustrated as well. He also says that Katie's grades are not great and that this is the one place where she can really stand out. Michael says that if Katie doesn't play more then he will try to find another team for her."

His questions were "How do you respond to Michael?" etc.

Now. We were supposed to talk about it with the people sitting near us. I happened to be sitting next to my Harvard twin Megan (she's a twin, born on April 1st, 1988; I mentioned her before). We talked about it and seemed to quickly come to the conclusion that you would talk to Katie, and try to ask her to think about how the other players feel, etc. We might talk about how she could help the other girls learn, etc.

The professor brought the class together and opened it to discussion. I thought it would be a fairly tame conversation about how to teach kids it's not all about winning, etc. I thought that, until the first girl commented that she didn't understand why so many people encourage this "communist distribution of playing time." She went on to argue that it's not bad for kids to want to win, and it's not bad for kids to learn that if they're not good at something, they don't get to play.

Whoa.

And so the conversation continued with people arguing that kids who are bad at playing shouldn't get to play. One girl even argued, "I don't think it's fair to give everyone time to play. Maybe those kids who aren't very good feel guilty for their team's losses." I had just been sitting and watching people get fired up until I heard that.The professor then said, "Most of you seem to be arguing that the good player should get more time. Does anyone feel strongly about a different opinion?" Before I knew what was happening, I raised my hand. I said I WAS the kid that didn't get to play 8th grade basketball because my team wanted to win and I wasn't that good. I said I spent hours in practice and never got to play; my team winning didn't matter to me because I had nothing to do with it.

The professor acknowledged my point, and then one of my classmates piped up and said, "So we just have to encourage kids who aren't good at things to keep doing it? If it's not ok to tell a kid they're not good at something, how will they learn?"

I got annoyed with that too. It's not like if I had gotten playing time, I would have thought I was good at basketball. I knew I wasn't that good. Trust me; as a 13 year old, you know when you're not good at something. As kids get older, they'll learn very quickly that they're not as good at things as other kids are. Adults don't need to tell them. And if, in some anomalous twist of reality, a kid doesn't realize they're not as good as other kids, don't worry-- the other kids will tell him pretty quick.

Anyway. It just made me think, "You all must have been the kid who was good at soccer; you wouldn't argue for her to get more playing time if you were the kid who would have to sit on the bench for her to play more." It made me think "Your parents were the crazies who would call the coach about something like this. Your parents were the ones who yelled at the ref. on the sidelines." Ugh. And the most discouraging thought of all was, "In 20 years, my kids are going to be going to school with yours."

So after we have these discussions, the professor always gives what he thinks is a good solution. Of course he started by saying it depends on how the team was advertised. (If the team wasn't advertised as a group where everyone gets playing time, we might have more of a problem.) But in general, he agreed that kids in 8th grade shouldn't be split into groups of who is and isn't good at things; there's plenty of time for that in high school. He said kids should get a chance to play. He suggested that perhaps the problem was only Michael's and that Katie didn't actually care. He said the coach should talk to Katie and the rest of the team to get a feel for how everyone feels. Ultimately, he said if Katie DID care, someone needed to talk to her about learning to be a good loser, learning what it means to be a "team", and learning to be committed to other people and worried about someone besides herself.

So I felt vindicated. But a lot of people left annoyed. And I suppose some of you probably agree with the other people in my class, and you're probably annoyed. But anyway. I guess it partly just goes to show that my moral compass is more closely aligned with my 60 year old professor than with my classmates. Big surprise. Perhaps that's why most of my friends in high school were faculty members.

Ok, I'm done now.