A Question of Self-Esteem

Ichallenge you. Turn on the television this afternoon and watch some talk shows--the more deranged the guests, the better. Now, count how many of the audience members blame the guests' problems on low selfesteem. I challenge you to find a show in which no one blames low selfesteem. You won't. It seems, if we believe talk show audiences, that raising one's self-esteem will cure all problems.

It also seems this way if we listen to many of today's educators. The latest fashion in the search for the cause of our nation's educational problems is low self-esteem. Many people are under the impression that the poor performance of American students is due primarily to their low self-esteem. While self-esteem is important, the combination of faulty reasoning, poor teaching and ideology involved in studying self-esteem make it a dangerous preoccupation for the educational establishment.

A 1991 study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) examined by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book, Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, found that during the adolescent years, there was a considerable gap between the self-esteem of girls and boys, and that girls' selfesteem fell drastically during those years. To many advocates, this is a sign that the educational system is failing girls. They point to the fact that girls score lower in math and science than boys as evidence.

Many have even extrapolated this result and gone so far as to say that schools must place a large focus on bolstering all students' self-esteem, in order that they can desire to perform.

There is some logic to this argument. If I am convinced that I am a failure, I probably will fail. If I am having trouble with a problem and I am assured that I am smart enough to figure out the answer, I will probably try harder, newly aware that it is within my grasp. However, the all-powerful selfesteem workshop can be very dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, especially when the information we have been given about self-esteem is somewhat questionable.

How is it questionable? We will get to that shortly. But first, what is selfesteem anyway? How exactly does one measure this elusive, fairy-dust quality? What it is seems straightforward enough: it is how much one esteems oneself (hence, "self-esteem"). Yet, what a researcher needs is something tangible to measure. So he or she asks such questions as appeared on the AAUW survey. Students were asked, for example, to respond "always true," "usually true," "sometimes true," or "rarely true," to the statement "I am good at a lot of things." But does answering "always true" really mean that one has high self-esteem, or does answering "rarely true" puts one at dangerous levels of depression? I find this hard to believe. Just as most of us recognize that extreme cockiness is a form of insecurity, I am tempted to rank most of those who answer "always true" as self-delusionary egotists, rather than students with healthy self-esteem levels.

Similarly, students were given high marks for expressing a desire to have a glamorous career, like a rock or sports star. Typically, adolescent girls scored lower in this area then did boys, a trend that the AAUW labeled a "glamour gap." Sommers rightly renames this a "maturity gap." Since girls mature faster than boys, the increase in the "glamour gap" during the adolescent years should be attributed to the fact that the more mature and sensible girls have more realistic goals than their less mature male classmates.

This probably does not account for all of the gender gap in selfesteem scores. Everyone is aware that adolescence is a hard time, and it is especially hard for girls. The depiction of females in movies, on television and especially in advertising ranges from the unattainable to the disgusting. It is frustrating for the average young woman to be told that she should grow up to be like a society's goddess like Cindy Crawford, and it is insulting and dangerous to say she should desire to look like Kate Moss. In addition to this pressure, girls often become victims of the bitter social rivalries that pervade young female social circles and are subjected to the unwanted attention of hormonally-challenged young males. I don't think any Harvard student would deny that adolescence sucks.

Yet, do these facts show that the education system is failing girls? Should our schools be spending more time on improving self-esteem? A closer look at some educational facts makes me think otherwise.

It is a well-known fact that American students score lower in math and science than Asian school children. But, according to Sommers, tests have shown that American children have much more faith in their math and science abilities than do Asian students. It seems that self-esteem is the only thing Americans score well on. Perhaps raising our students' selfesteem is not that important, and we should be focussing more on education. But what about the gender gap just within our borders?

First, it is a glaring fact that the lowest scorers on self-esteem exams, white girls, happen to be the highest achieving group in the country. They get the best grades and attend college in higher numbers than any other group. To reinforce this point, the highest scoring group on the AAUW's survey was Black males, the group most educationally at risk. It seems that self-esteem and actual success are negatively related.

Second, the results of the survey have been used to explain the gap in math and science scores between girls and boys. The AAUW linked the two to draw the conclusion that an educational system more focused on the needs of girls would be more successful.

This ignores two facts. The first of these is the fact that girls outperform boys in reading and writing by even larger margins. On the National Assessment of Education Progress Tests (NAEP) given to seventeen-year-olds, boys scored three points higher on math and eleven points higher in science than girls, yet girls performed 13 points better in reading and 24 points higher in writing than boys, according to Sommers.

The second fact is that boys are much more at risk than girls. Females are more likely to be in school orchestras, drama groups, student government, school newspapers and other extracurricular activities than boys, and, as mentioned, perform better academically. Alternatively, males are more likely to drop out, more likely to become alcoholics or drug addicts, more likely to commit violent crime and go to jail, and more likely to die through suicide during adolescence (although more females attempt suicide, nearly five times as many boys actually die), according to Sommers. It is clear where the real problem is.

The problems in schooling are not self-esteem, but fundamental skills, not with girls, but with boys, specifically Black boys. As long as teachers are able to turn their backs to the real problems in the name of improving self-esteem we will never see any improvements. This brings me to my final point, the role of the teachers.

Self-esteem, I will not deny, is a powerful and important force, and important force, and, when taught correctly, can be very useful. However, in the face of evidence that tells me that many teachers cannot even teach what they are supposed to teach, I find it hard to believe that they can teach self-esteem in a productive way. Self-esteem has caught on like wild-fire in the educational establishment, and I will venture to say that this is because it is easy to teach: it is a lot easier for a teacher to tell a child that his or her performance does not matter, as long as he or she feels good, than it is to sit down and teach the material in a productive way.

A teacher who may have had only minimal success in teaching academics, can gain accolades from his or her colleagues because of his or her students' self-esteem. Knowledge steps aside for pride.

The most glaring fact of all, is that, frankly, we have nothing to be proud of. American students do not perform at a level worthy of pride. Americans are known throughout the world as cocky, loud and self-confident, yet increasingly we are losing educational, economic and political battles to the rest of the world. Perhaps it is time for a little humility and hard work.