American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem
1843magazine.com
1843magazine.com
I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band.
In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going guys" etc.
While this feedback raises self-esteem with positive feedback, there is no criticism of where they failed...at all!! Who's going to tell them, "Hey, your timing on the G-C chord switch sucked"?
When these same kids go for a "real" performance/audition, they suck at it, fail miserably and thus causing anti-social behaviors, anger, and in extreme cases, suicides.
I personally believe in a system of constructive criticism where positive feedback is necessary for the kids, yet someone actually tells them that they can do better in this, this and this area.
Irrationally high/low self-esteem is a bane for competition.
That doesn't sound like very constructive criticism.
A constructive criticism isn't a one-liner on HN.
If you're skilled enough to show how that transition works, show it to them and make them learn it.
Which we, as a society, also seem reluctant to do. "oh you must not be good at that, try something else", instead of "if you want it you are going to have to work harder"
I'm changing the name of my band to this. ;-)
It's muscle memory, plain and simple. You just have to do it a lot, over and over. I've had music teachers essentially say "that part sucked, you need to spend more time practicing it". There's no trick to be told, there's no intellectualization that will help. Practice.
If the overall performance was poor, and something so basic was clearly an issue, then maybe they don't realise?
This is like a development candidate being poor at simple interview problems - it simply is the case that often you don't know what you're doing wrong until you've developed skill, but people around you saying you're doing great can suppress your desire to work on that skill in favor of rushing ahead to interview where you fall flat on your face.
(An Open Mic D-Chord is a D-Chord (D A D F#) where they don't mute the lowest string and thus put a really nasty sounding E note on the bottom of the chord)
If it's their music instructor, maybe. But again, that's not really the place. Next lesson would be the right time and place to get that feedback.
I agree with your statement in principle, but at the same time, people need to be willing to give some meaningful comments. If I'm trying to break through in a rock band, I want criticism so I can figure out how to improve. Being told "Good performance brah", if you know you sucked, sucks.
Also, part of the objective of having the public performance is to simply get kids comfortable performing publicly. My kid was practically shitting himself before the show, he was so nervous about playing in front of a crowd. So, a healthy part of the applause is recognition that they simply performed publicly. It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again.
Maybe I have different view on things, but if I look back at how much focus was put on putting in effort (and not actually achieving anything) during my high school years, then I think we have things wrong to some extent. It's even worse today than it was before -- I have a friend who works in a school and he says it's great that grading is being phased out.. not sure whether I agree on that.
There's a difference between a well written function, and an entire application that's well organized and thought out. And there's a difference between playing in your garage and playing on stage.
Did the band suck because they couldn't play? Or did they suck because they were nervous? Well the only way to get over that is to play in front of people more.
I also think there should be a difference in expectations depending on where/what you're seeing. You have every right to criticize a group playing Madison Square Garden. But there's a reason the 14 year olds are playing O'Mallys Pub on a Tuesday, or the Ernie Ball stage at Warped Tour, and not the main stages or an arena.
What's particularly awesome and worth congratulating is watching a band of teenagers suck on stage, and then watching them a month later suck a little less. We should be striving for "better" rather than "great", in my opinion.
Is my friend just giving coding a go or are they trying to get a dev job?
Is my friend trying to show me what they have built or asking for help improving the quality of their code?
Etc etc.
Likewise is this a 14 year old athlete trying to compete at the state level? Or a 14 year old trying out football because his friends play?
You want you son/friend to learn to code and his first project is copy-pasta from a book. Fantastic. Actually doing something is by far the number 1 challenge people never overcome.
Second project is also copy-pasta, that's only fantastic if you son/friend learn to be a typist. He and You both know he can do that. Does not mean you need to trash him, but showing the same enthusiasm as with the first project is counter productive, instead you should probably encourage him to tinker a bit with the program.
Challenge needs to grow. Sure you don't want to discourage a beginner showing how far he is from the mountain summit, but after climbing a step you need to show him the next one.
There's a way to frame it. At the end of a band performance, the audience (even if it is just 3-4 people) is encouraged to clap, even if the performance sucked. Usually, they do clap. This is enough of a positive reinforcement.
When the whole thing is over, before packing up, have a 15 minute meeting in which all you do is say,
"Great performance guys. You did a,b,c really well. Jeff, I saw you listened to my instruction. Hi five! Stacy, you did a good job. There were some mistakes in your chord transitions, let's talk about that so you can do it better next time"
Kids should grow up knowing they are doing well but aren't perfect yet. Let's keep improving until we get there.
I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive.
It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode.
At that point they are mentally ready to practice over their problem areas straight away.
Parents can set their kids back by berating them at the wrong time.
Would you apply the same to, say, mathematics? Or chemistry? Or programming? Do you think the parents should not give their kids feedback on these subjects, and instead leave it to the teacher (aka technical coach)?
Look at it this way: you're starting a new job. A very stressful one, where you have to learn a bunch of new things, long days, and not just learning one thing - you're learning dozens of subject every day. There are a bunch of others in your cohort who are also learning and you're all compared and graded against each other.
Then you come home at night and you vent to your wife about your day and how this one guy is an ass-kisser and this other colleague is full of himself, with an example of something he said. And then your wife, who maybe took a college course on one of the topics you used as an example, says "yeah honey that sucks. BTW that example you just used, you're wrong, it's actually xyz". What would that accomplish? Would you think "oh thank you, now I didn't learn 50 new things today, but 51! Great!"? No, you'd think she massively missed the point, and is massively missing the point about you, and she would be.
I think that's the problem right there. When I was in school, the day was not long nor was it stressful. I suppose I'm inclined to agree with you that if the above circumstances are true, a parent should not behave that way. However, if those circumstances are true, and my kid seems at least average or above, I'd as a parent do some hard thinking and consider finding another school for him.
One thing I learned in all of my education: You may learn a lot when you are overloaded, but you learn nothing well. Not just at their level, but at university.
I'm good at a bunch of subjects - likely much better than the teacher (math, physics, etc). If school is so stressful that my kid cannot learn these well, and there is no room for help from me, then it's a bad school.
That's insane. Of course it is!
Until their skill in a subject surpasses yours, you're the only technical coach.
Which for all but one or two subjects, it will.
Look I'm not saying parents can't ever teach their children anything. What I'm saying is that parents need to know their place and role, and they can do much more good by being emotionally supportive and in general creating an environment in which children can and want to learn, than by being yet another instructor who's trying to cram ever more things into the child's head (much of which will be different from what their school or team coach is teaching them anyway).
It is quite literally my job as a coach to point out a kids mistakes. They handle it really well nearly universally. But the overly critical parents (you can see them coming a long way off) cause so much negative reactions it makes my job harder.
And quite simply, anyone who has coached anything knows that being critical at the time of the event is almost universally detrimental (and not just for kids). Your mind/body is just not ready for coaching at the end of an adrenal dump event.
You need distance to evaluate performance, and the emotional burden of parent/kid relationships makes that more true not less.
Mike Matheny - the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals - wrote a letter to parents while he was coaching his son's little league team that touches on this idea. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is primarily his thesis:
"I believe that the biggest role of the parent is to be a silent source of encouragement. I think if you ask most boys what they would want their parents to do during the game; they would say "NOTHING". Once again, this is ALL about the boys. I believe that a little league parent feels that they must participate with loud cheering and "Come on, let's go, you can do it", which just adds more pressure to the kids. I will be putting plenty of pressure on these boys to play the game the right way with class, and respect, and they will put too much pressure on themselves and each other already. You as parents need to be the silent, constant, source of support."
Link to full letter: www.mac-n-seitz.com/teams/mike-matheny-letter.html
I don't allow parents to do the "tiger mode" criticism on the sidelines because it is not objective. The parents have emotional investment in winning.
More importantly, it should be private and only for the eyes and ears of the team/band/player.
Being supportive of shitty performances is dishonest and shitty.
Then again... the "parents" of today cry fits if their kid plays like crap and doesn't get some sort of participation award.
A negative attitude coming from the parent can really upset the child and they won't learn anything from it.
As a coach I can't tell a parent what to say to their kid at home after they have a poor performance but I usually advise them to try cheer their kid up not cut them down.
It is my role as coach to provide the objective criticism not the parent's. It matters where the criticism comes from.
This is a part of the problem with the original article. Parents are too emotionally involved to teach their kids. They think their kid is special and then they constantly compare them against other kids and then they put the parental pressure on to the child. It isn't helping.
I lived in the UK for a few years and found Brits very hard to read / resistant to confrontation. On the other hand, I'm married to a Spaniard, and when I'm over there, it's sometimes a bit uncomfortable how direct and open people are.
Americans will make up a hundred reasons to not do something when they don't have a technical leg to stand on. I was starting to hate this Belgian guy because he wanted something done and I didn't want to spend the time required to do it. Finally, after coming up with all sorts of excuses, I just told him the truth and thought he'd storm out.
He just said "Fine! Now we can go have a beer"
I don't know Swedish from Martian, but I'm surprised the language doesn't have "pleasantries". They seem near universal.
I know that I (as an American) have had uncomfortable experiences with translated Chinese for instance, assuming someone was asking impertinent questions when it was really just them being polite.
I think most germanic languages are just much more focused on information content. On the other hand I can get into deep discussions with strangers, even disagreeing with each other, but not get emotional in any way, actually even enjoying the exchange. With Americans I feel there's a mountain of smalltalk and pleasantries to conquer until you can start being sincere. However that might also just me not understanding the culture enough to do that correctly.
Sure! Let's do lunch! Week 42? No my in-laws will be visiting that week. Week 43? Sorry, I have a dentist appointment that week. Week 44, no I can't then, but maybe week 45? Oh, we have a christmas thing that week. Week 46? I'm not sure, but I think I need to keep that week open. How about we get back in touch after the holidays? Absolutely. Rinse and repeat.
Try to look at it from the other point of view rather than writing it off because it is not your "one true way".
The Scots and Irish can be brutally direct, while a Londoner will take great pains to avoid confrontation (in general).
Not to be glib, but when I lived in Europe I was shocked at how many unknown American bands they would fly out to play at tiny venues (bars, "underground" clubs) every weekend. I asked, don't you have your own unknown bands that rehearse in garages and dorm rooms? It turns out: not so much, not nearly to the level that this exists in America.
So maybe the difference is that Europeans like to shit all over their friends' bands?
Artists I particularly like are Robyn (pop), The Knife (electronic/“IDM”), Fever Ray (one half of The Knife), The Cardigans (pop), Lykke Li (indie pop), iamamiwhoami (experimental electronic) Opeth (death metal), Kleerup (electronic dance), Neneh Cherry (pop/hip-hop), José González (indie pop). Note: genres aren’t particularly useful but I thought some indication of what the artist is like is better than none.
If you like Röyksopp, I’d recommend checking out Kleerup, The Knife, iamamiwhoami, Lykke Li and Fever Ray.
Also, you may not know the name but you’ll be very familiar with the songs written and/or produced by Max Martin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin
Same in sports. They all go full hysterical mode when they qualify for the next round of 8. Er... boy, you do this every week, you haven't failed reaching the final once in the last 3 years, why do you and your team mates and your family need to overplay it so much as if you accomplished anything special? Do other players/athletes from other countries need to do the same? No.
I can't see the point to spread and spread and spread on things which have just been done how they should be done. Acknowledge them and move to the stuff which went wrong or can be improved, that's more interesting.
About making a fuss about nothing, I remember that time when I visited the USA as a teenager, and when we left most of the American adults began to cry (after we managed to escape from the bloody hugs. I don't know who invented hugs, but I hate him.). We looked at each other, wondering what was going on. It seemed our departure was something big, so we tried to force ourselves to do the same but we didn't manage to shed a tear. So we kids had to witness all these grown-ups crying for nothing. That scene shocked me, I remember it after 25 years.
(Okay, one possible explanation was that they may have thought that we were sent back to slavery in a third-world commie state, since God knows all countries don't have the luck to be in northern America.)
Yet you're from France, where people kiss each other as a greeting.
For example, my daughter did a rock-camp last summer. It was some neighborhood kids that got together with a teacher for 5 afternoons to learn six songs and after the camp was over, they put on a show to play the songs they had been practicing.
The kids' talent levels ranged from truly amazing to early beginner. Nobody played flawlessly but everybody had a lot of fun. The feedback the kids received was overwhelmingly positive and I think it had the effect of making the kids want to do it again next summer. People were congratulating them on their hard work and learning to play so many songs in very little time.
The kids that played at a high level would probably appreciate some criticism. The kids that were struggling may have been embarrassed and less likely to continue. I could be wrong about that, but it's my gut feeling.
The constructive criticism might be better off in a more private and 'safe' (biased towards the receiver) setting; this way shaming someone for a good attempt isn't the result.
It was basically this:
1) Parents don't understand a child's emotional needs. Children need a foundation of love, which at an early age basically means attention from and interaction with caregivers.
2) Modern parents, especially pronounced starting with baby boomers, often feel they didn't get enough love and support from their parents. So they lavish their children with praise – frequently instead of focused attention – and think they're doing a good job.
3) This creates children who commingle love with achievement. That is, their parents love them because of their supposed achievements, and thus, if they're not achieving things, they aren't worthy of love. So children simultaneously have inflated egos but also very insecure egos. (This also ties into the whole idea that you should praise a child's effort, not their intelligence.)
That's all very abstract though. He gave a bunch of examples, but only one has stuck with me. Let's say your three year old comes to you with a drawing. Unless she's a prodigy, that drawing is going to be objectively bad, mostly squiggles with maybe a shape or two.
How most modern parents respond:
Parent: Good job! This is such a pretty drawing. I like how you used different colors. That's a great circle. You're a good drawer. Can you go draw me a square now?
Parent then goes back to watching TV, which would be a smartphone in an updated example.
How a parent should respond:
Parent: Thank you for showing me your drawing. I like how you used different colors and only drew on the paper. (legitimate praise is fine). What's this? (points to circle blob)
Kid: A horse.
Parent: Oh, a horse. Cool. Does she have a name? (or Is the horse happy today? Can he run fast? whatever. The point is to engage in open ended questions that show you care and let the kid drive the conversation, somewhat.)
Kid: His name is cow.
Parent: A horse named cow, how silly.
And so on.
Anyway, I'm sure people would have problems with my sample good response too, and I'm probably misremembering the details. I'm also not sure the baby boomer stuff is totally accurate. But the overall idea is to give attention and focused interaction, not undue praise, and that makes a ton of sense to me.
Edited for typos and formatting.
At some early point in my life i saw how meaningless praise was. Parents (mine and others) praised without warrant.. and it was obvious to me. Worse yet, i couldn't figure out where the line was - what was legitimate praise? I became distrusting of all praise, and rarely felt pride from anyone but myself. Which, honestly sucks.
Whether it's parents praising their children, or gifts at Christmas that people often don't want but smile and act like they do.. everyone is just lying to each other so constantly that everything of value feels so fake.
It's honestly quite upsetting to me. I wonder if it's like this everywhere? Is it mostly an American situation?
I’ve found this to more common among other cultural groups (for instance, some of my Indian and Iranian friends). I find Americans are generally on the blunt/direct/plain spoken side, sometimes extremely so.
Can you elaborate on who you’re comparing Americans to, and what contexts you find some other national/cultural group to have a different response?
Also known as the "Everything is Awesome" syndrome. And this is not just for kids. In American companies (at least as far as I could observe), management principles teach you that you should not say anything negative to the employee directly, instead talk about "opportunities for improvement", etc... It's everywhere.
And I wager that the political correctness is also very much linked to that.
Everybody's enthusiastic at the performance, like you say.
At the next lesson, they review the recording. But then, they've been receiving that kind of critique at every lesson. You should hear the conductor let 'em have it at orchestra rehearsal. Because of this kind of dialog and close analysis, they also know exactly how well they're playing, immediately and intimately. Part of the goal is to teach kids how to engage in the critical dialog, and to be self-critiquing.
With the typical teen rock band, there is no adult involvement at all, other than fiscal.
Reward and punishment externalizes motivation. American's tend to reward and other countries to punishment.
However I bet you in those other countries they hate math just as much as everyone in USA.
If you want people to be intrinsically motivated, rewards like "Great Job, awesome" have the exact opposite effect.
Why, 90 comments under their shitty YT video, 7 of them heavily upvoted.
And even if they didn't know, right after the show isn't the time to mention mistakes.
It's hard enough to get up in front of people to speak, much less perform, so I think the situation you describe, if followed later by a discussion on what to improve and work on, is entirely appropriate.
Did you know that Steve Jones, the guitarist from the sex pistols, had to have another guitarist play behind a curtain for him for the first few shows? It didn't stop the band from changing popular music, and it didn't stop him from developing a very tight technique.[1]
Also, the ability to do rote sums is not the same as understanding math. So the fact that his son "could add up already" doesn't mean much, at least out of context.
Giving someone self-esteem doesn't mean letting them whine all the time. Your swimming instructors saying “C’mon dude, stop complaining, let’s get on with it!” IS giving the kid self-esteem!
Teaching many ways to add is important because not all kids are going to be able to learn the same way at that age. Different methods are going to "click" for different students. And those extra ways of adding aren't useless. In fact I spent a fair bit of time in college math and computer courses learning new ways to count, let alone add.
But, in general, yes, suicide rates are rising for young people. This is worrying because young women were for years the group at lowest risk of death by suicide. (But with high rates of self harm and attempted suicide).
(US media has terrible reporting on suicide, but this one at least has some details) http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-22/cdc-suicide-d...
You can get some stats from CDC here, I guess. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ind...
Calling a terrible work product terrible isn't bullying.
When people tell you you are great at something, but you don't know, or can't talk about it, and feel you can't live up to your parents/teachers expectations, that's a lot of stress.
Also if you thought you were great at something in school, but actually you find out you suck in the real world, if that was a major part of your identity, some people just can't live with that.
Suicide is considered 'contagious'. Before social media (1970) the 'contagiousness' (to really muddle a complex issue) was ~6. Meaning that each suicide 'affected' 6 other young people deeply, seriously disrupted their life, or left them feeling suicidal as well. Typically this was only close friends and family. Now, as we are all more connected, we see that a single suicide affects more people and more quickly. Now the 'contagiousness' of a single suicide spreads to 134 young people, a ~2100% increase.
My wife teaches and this is all over the local schools now [0]. Kids are now live streaming and live snapping these grizzly acts. It seems that you become the most popular kid in school in an instant and that you get a lot of social capital when you kill yourself live.
I want you to know that I am choosing my words carefully now: It is fucking crazy. Not even kids in a fucking Syrian war zone are doing this fucking crap. To borrow from Tumblr: I. Can't. Even. My wife is damn near at the end of her rope with this on top of all the other shit she has to deal with. I think she'll end up as yet another burnout teacher, I can't blame her.
The linked article has a lot more and better discussion on the complexities of these suicide clusters and how hard it can be to identify and stop them. These clusters seem not to be linked to self-esteem and 'everyone gets a ribbon' culture as strongly as they are linked to Instagram and other digital shrines/death-cults generators. They may be linked, but it seems that the root cause of the self esteem cult and the suicide clusters may be social media. They are correlated, but not causal. This brings up an interesting case with the military suicide rates, as they are a very tight community that the rest of America has forgotten. To quote an Iraqi Porto-potty, of all things: 'The USA is not at war, the USMC is at war'.
We are loosing the war with suicide, and social media is the enemy.
If you are feeling suicidal, there are many resources available. Here are some sources: Call: 1 (800) 273-8255 (english) 800 273 8255 (spanish) Visit: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ (English) http://www.didihirsch.org/spc-spanish (Spanish)
[0]http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-c...
There are resources readily available to stop you killing yourself right now. After that the prospects for help tend to dry up pretty quickly until you boil down to the next crisis. Hotlines are a fine thing to have and to promote, but they're not nearly enough.
This is the big miss from the self-esteem advocate crowds... the ones that do the participation trophies. They aren't creating self-esteem with worthless praise and merit-less awards... they're creating a dependency on the praise of others and that's not healthy: it creates the opposite of esteem when not fulfilled.
True. And from what I understand, adults get that self-esteem from being given unconditional love as children, when they don't have the capacity to provide it to themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
South Korea and Japan are much higher.
Also, given the US's gun laws presumably suicide is often more successfully completed in the US than in other places. Given this, the US suicide rate isn't comparatively that high.
Endless standardized tests. There was one standardized test when I was a kid -- an intelligence test -- and my parents never showed me the results. I took the ACT and SAT, but they seemed much less critical to getting into a decent college.
Grades seem much more critical today, due to competition for slots and scholarships in the more prestigious colleges.
Ranking systems, such as who gets to skip a grade in what subject.
Competitive selection processes, such as who gets into the youth orchestra, and which level of the youth orchestra.
Increased pressure to attend college, and to major in a short list of subjects that are associated with lucrative jobs.
Mountains of homework, yet we're also told that kids should learn how to "code" and to build up their "resume" for college admissions, oh and maybe also start a business. I learned to code in the ample spare time that I had because I had relatively little homework.
I would not survive being a kid today.
I'm not going to argue this assertion, because I think it's a valid one, but I would like to give it context that the author is seemingly lacking:
As a generalization spanning several decades, parents aren't interested in being parents and in turn the provenance of their responsibilities at home - discipline, ethics, morals, codes of conduct - have been transitioned to that of either the School System or LEOs in more extreme cases.
I submit it's nearly impossible to be both an academic task-master and an emotional development coach at the same time and expect both of them to excel in all scenarios where the provider is a Civic Organization of some sort (e.g. school system).
After all, it's a bunch of adults promoting the self-esteem bandwagon for these past few decades, not the kids. I wholly encourage Mr. Astill to join his local PTA and begin to address his long-term concerns with the root of the problem. I say this rather tongue in cheek, because actually doing something about the issue in one's one neighborhood is a lot harder than sitting down and writing about it (as a writer, believe me I know).
But society and culture just expects the job of you. Do it, don't be trained to do it, and probably worse of all do not organize society around promoting those who are best at it. In any other disciple if you are amazing at it you should expect gainful employment carrying it out. And there is a dramatic difference between parenting and caretaking or teaching. And even those have really bad real world metrics to gauge success, given by how often sitters or teachers can perform poorly.
But you don't solve this problem when you shove down every adults throat how not having children means they are a failure as a person, combined with the expectation that they should both be good parents and have an independent second (or first) career.
Being a parent is its own job. Throughout history, humans have consistently dedicated tremendous amounts of absolute hours of its adult population to the raising of children. Societies often organized around the subjugation of an entire sex to do the job. It is crucial for the wellbeing and long term prosperity of current and future generations people accept that reality.
This really stood out to me because I often found my own examination results puzzling. I would ace exams that I thought I failed and just pass ones I was sure I had done well in.
This has lead me to believe that the more I know about a subject, the more I know how little I actually know about it and the greater respect I have for subject as a whole.
This might explain why children who are not great at maths might think they are. Not due to an inflated self esteem but because "knowing what you don't know" is a part of the learning process.
On academics, I want my kids to learn how to learn. And to love to learn. I want them to learn to be persistent, have mental fortitude, be formidable, take risks, be collaborative, and not be afraid to fail. They should learn to be productive in whatever aspect of society they end up in. I want them to be happy. Lives are short. Childhoods are shorter. Striving to be the best at math and science academically gets a "meh" sort of reaction from me.
Yes we need those skills, and raw academic achievement is an interesting measurement, but, I'd like to see some convincing stats that it holds a causal relationship to national productivity per capita and GDP. I'm guessing that would be the goal of an education, in terms of the economy.
"If their instructors had focused on making them feel good about swimming, instead of on making them swim, they could have drowned."
Swimming is almost natural. Most mammals can swim with out training (even my cat knew how to swim). Fear on the other hand is what leads to drowning. You don't need formal training in swimming to stay a float. You need to not be afraid of the water.
On personal level for the downvoters as to why this is such a crappy metaphor is I know several adult family members that do not know how to swim and one of them my wife and just trained recently.... it required lots and lots of confidence boosting and reassuring.
So the instructor actually does need to make them "feel good" aka comfortable with the water.
The author could have picked so many other metaphors where state of mind plays less of a role.
I have seen adults that refuse to take lessons because... because... they are afraid.
So regardless I still say it is pretty crappy metaphor.
Apes can't swim for the most part, and often drown. We are apes.
I feel like a lot of Hacker News readers can probably relate to this, as I've sensed a lot of self-directed joy has come from their time spent learning and using computers.
Looking back, other people's people evaluating/encouraging/criticising my math skills, swimming abilities, or self-esteem has done much worse for me than individually realising what's important to myself and wanting to work towards that. I really hope that we culturally have a change in attitude towards these things.
Basic skill Progressing towards goal Meets goal Exceeds goal
And in several subjects (it grows every semester), Es are not awarded at all. I am not sure I understand the point of this system.
It's not like kids really learn much in elementary school anyways. Which is itself a problem, but a different one.
"I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special" - Jane Lane, in Daria.
Not sure what to think of this - I always thought you had to learn/get proficient on the basics before delegating those to a machine...
Computers don't do division that way, anyway.
There's a carriage with two rows of numbers, a full keyboard (10 keys per column), a hand crank, and a second crank which moves the carriage sideways one notch. Moving the carriage is a shift by a power of 10.
To multiply, you clear everything, then punch one number into the keyboard. The buttons lock down and stay down. When you turn the crank one turn, the number in the keyboard is added to the upper row on the carriage, and the lower row has 1 added. So to multiply 25 x 25, you punch 25 into the keyboard. Turn the crank once, and you have 25 in the upper row and 1 in the lower row. Turn the crank five times, and you have 125 in the upper row and 5 in the lower row. Then shift the carriage one notch right. Turn the crank once, and you add 250 to the upper row, and 10 to the lower row. One more crank turn, and you have 25 x 25 = 650 in the upper row, and 25 in the lower row. This makes it very clear that multiplication is repeated addition with shifting.
Division is repeated subtraction. You clear everything and enter the dividend. Turn the crank once to add the dividend to the top row on the carriage. Then clear the keyboard, clear the lower row, and shift to division mode. In division mode, turning the crank subtracts from the top row while adding 1 to the bottom row. Now enter the divisor in the keyboard. Move the carriage so that the high digit of the divisor and the high digit of the dividend line up. Turn the crank. This subtracts the shifted divisor from the dividend and adds 1 to the quotient. If the dividend goes negative, a bell rings and 9999 appears at the left end of the top row, indicating you subtracted too much and went negative. That's OK; just turn the crank one turn backwards, the leading 999.. changes to 000 and the bell rings again. You now have one digit of quotient. Shift the carriage left one row and repeat. Each shift gives one more digit of quotient. When the carriage is back to the full left position, the lower row is the quotient and the upper row is the remainder. This makes it very clear that division is repeated subtraction with shifting.
This is clearer than manual long division, with all that trial divisor and guessing stuff. It reflects the basic fact that division really is just repeated subtraction with counting.
It's pretty much expected in the US that kids don't really learn much of anything in school until they get to 8th grade. I certainly think we could introduce more advanced math concepts at earlier grades instead of taking five years to cover basic arithmetic.
That's not to say that I would like us to adopt a system like that of China or South Korea, in which students are drilled from morning to night on mostly rote tasks and then pitted against each other in a gladiatorial competition called the National College Entrance Examination. If there was a better way of squashing children's natural curiosity and love of learning, I can't really envision it.
2. Is there any factual evidence for this often-repeated stereotype about Asian children having less curiosity and love of learning than American ones?
2. I never said that Asian students are less curious. From interacting with Chinese and South Korean classmates, they are just as intellectually curious as their American peers. I just don't think the East Asian model of education is very good at fostering individual engagement and understanding. It's heavily focused on rote memorization and is definitely "teach to the test". I would welcome a study on it with a good analysis. Don't really known how you would measure it though. South Korea also has the highest suicide rates in the developed world, and much of it is concentrated in those under 18. So there are plenty of reasons why we would not want to adopt it here.
I'd be interested to see a citation for this claim; I think it's either misleading, or things have changed a lot over the last 5-8 years (which I doubt). What I recall from my time working in education research, looking at the international tests including PISA, is that average scores from the USA are brought down by the fact that the bottom-performing kids do so much worse than elsewhere, which if you look at the way public school funding works in America, makes a lot of sense (i.e. wealthy district = higher taxes = more funding for public education).
The problem isn't that America has more low-SES students than other places, it's that we (speaking as someone currently living in America) do a worse job educating them. I'm not saying that the problem is only inequality, but it is definitely part of the picture.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-Grown-U...
Self-esteem is reliance on your own power to think, judge, and act; regardless of what others may feel, say, or threaten. If some snowflakes cannot stand being judged by others, or cannot judge themselves, they do not have self-esteem.
As for post-modern "teachers" who believe that unfounded praise, unrelated to achievement, is the source of self-esteem -- they are nurturing lemmings, alienated from their true human potential.
Self-esteem is simply the belief that one can be loved and respected for who they are.
Needing to "achieve" (or believe that achievements are worthwhile) in order to feel good about ones self is the opposite to self-esteem.
No one wants to just admit their kid is pretty average or below average at certain things. They believe they have failed themselves and that there is no way that their offspring could just be a regular person.
Of course it has become harder to be a regular person and have a fine life in modern, Western society. We don't have the regular person jobs anymore that a regular person who is pretty average can take up like they could generations ago.
The stakes are high and a smaller and smaller group of high achievers, or what appear to be high achievers get all the spoils. A parent has an instinct to make every effort to guide their offspring to that to the point you get average kids who honestly believe they are well above average. It has been reenforced.