Blockbuster article in the Winter 2004 edition of City Journal: "Self-Reliance vs. Self-Esteem," by Michael Knoz Beran. It's hard to summarize, given the length and complexity of the article, but I'll quote a few key paragraphs:
In its emphasis on self-knowledge gained through the study of poetry and heroes, Emerson’s idea of self-reliance is poles apart from the modern notion of self-esteem. He believed, as most Americans do, that there is in every man a restless desire to better himself, along with an innate desire to transcend unworthy impulses. The modern school of self-esteem, however, sees no need to transcend, no reason to make what Emerson called an “effort at the perfect”—to find out the best and strongest places in one’s soul. The modern proponents of self-esteem argue that the undeveloped self, however callow, should be praised as it is. In contrast to Emerson’s work, the primitivist ethic of the self-esteem movement promotes not the discovery but the abdication of the self...
Once the Deweyesque seed—which Paul Goodman described in 1960 as...“permissiveness in all animal behavior and interpersonal expression”—was planted in the home-economics classroom, the idea of public education as a process of helping young minds discover the best that is within them through exposure to the best that has been thought, said, and done came to an end. The older model of education gave way to a therapeutic approach, which culminated in the establishment, in California, of a legislative task force to promote self-esteem by, among other things, weaving it into the state’s “total education program.” Despite unremitting ridicule, other states adopted the California model for their own schools, and before long, conservative columnist John Leo was describing self-esteem pedagogy as “the dominant educational theory in the country.” By now it has pervaded every corner of educational theory; a recent search of the education-journal literature turned up over 5,000 articles that focused on self-esteem...
The notion that if you feel good about yourself you will be able to achieve something worthwhile, though it contains a grain of truth, puts the cart before the horse. The soundest foundation of self-esteem is genuine achievement, and numerous studies have shown no measurable benefit from the self-esteem movement in the schools. Even so, under the banner of self-esteem, schools have dumbed down their curricula, ended gifted-and-talented programs, stopped tracking kids, emphasized Dewey-style group projects and groupthink rather than individual achievement, and done away with valedictorians—because rewarding success might make some kids feel bad. Yet if the pupil is continually made to feel good about his unformed self—in all its narrowness of horizon and aspiration—what becomes of the quintessential American faith that a boy can be born in a log cabin, learn his sums by the light of the fireplace, and grow up to be president—or be born in a Harlem tenement, and grow up to be secretary of state?
True, Emerson did use the word “self-esteem” (so did Milton in Paradise Lost). But how fallen and changed is the educrats’ version of the concept! Emerson argued that such esteem is justified only where a person has done the hard work of developing a self worthy to be esteemed: such esteem must, in Milton’s words, be “grounded on just and right / Well manag’d. . . .” By contrast, the modern philosophers of self-esteem encourage a complacent adoration of the unperfected self.
Posted by kswygert at January 12, 2004 02:56 PM