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American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

1843magazine.com

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Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#61

Post by abstractbeliefs »

sliverstorm wrote: post #58
6stringmerc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not sound like it but it actually is quite helpful - translated it means "you are not doing well at a very basic thing and need more practice" because if a guitarist, on stage, can't hit a G-C chord switch competently, then there's really not a lot of wiggle room. They...suck...and need to be shown ways to improve. A lot of times the self-esteem-based response will dismiss the criticism as 'being mean' or so…

Do they not know they blew the chord switch? It seems like they'd know that.

Probably not - you're supposed to hone your craft through practice before you perform in the way that was described.

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.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#62

Post by oldmanjay »

charlesdm wrote: post #59
mgalka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country are you from? In my experience Americas fall somewhere in the middle in terms of directness, compared to European countries. 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.

Belgium. It's not necessarily the directness that I mind, it's the fact that often people are (excuse my language) full of shit. They say A, but actually mean B. Which is a trait, for example, the British have as well, but one I seem to understand a lot better than when I'm dealing with Americans.

I've never met a European who wasn't as full of shit as anyone else. I suppose Belgians may be magical in that regard but I suspect not.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#63

Post by bsder »

sliverstorm wrote: post #58
6stringmerc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not sound like it but it actually is quite helpful - translated it means "you are not doing well at a very basic thing and need more practice" because if a guitarist, on stage, can't hit a G-C chord switch competently, then there's really not a lot of wiggle room. They...suck...and need to be shown ways to improve. A lot of times the self-esteem-based response will dismiss the criticism as 'being mean' or so…

Do they not know they blew the chord switch? It seems like they'd know that.

The Open Mic D-Chord disagrees with you ...

(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)

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#64

Post by maxxxxx »

sp332 wrote: post #4

If self-esteem is so high, why is suicide so common? 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 student…

They don't have self-esteem but exactly the opposite. They are in constant need of external validation to feel good about themselves. A person with real self-esteem doesn't need to be praised all the time.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#65

Post by charlesdm »

oldmanjay wrote: post #62
charlesdm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium. It's not necessarily the directness that I mind, it's the fact that often people are (excuse my language) full of shit. They say A, but actually mean B. Which is a trait, for example, the British have as well, but one I seem to understand a lot better than when I'm dealing with Americans.

I've never met a European who wasn't as full of shit as anyone else. I suppose Belgians may be magical in that regard but I suspect not.

Belgians are definitely also full of shit, but in our own special way. :-) I guess it’s more of a cultural thing, where you expect something and reality is something else.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#67

Post by squeaky-clean »

charlesdm wrote: post #52
maroonblazer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American and my 10 yr old son is in an organized band that includes a weekly private lesson and a public performance. I agree with skywhopper that there's a time and place for criticism and right after the show, especially at that age, is not it. 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…

Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. 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 so…

If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patterns without asking would be really demoralizing.

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.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#68

Post by kofejnik »

agentgt wrote: post #20
maxxxxx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. As a kid I was not afraid of water. I could dive 10 meters down without fear. But I still couldn't swim without instruction.

Maybe so. But the author says "drown" not swim. I presume you knew how to float if you weren't afraid of the water? I have seen adults that refuse to take lessons because... because... they are afraid. So regardless I still say it is pretty crappy metaphor.

I can only float (i.e. relax on my back doing nothing) in very salty seas, such as Aegean sea, and I absolutely cannot do it in fresh water. Despite it, my parents taught me to swim at 6, no way I'd be able to float before that.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#69

Post by r00fus »

Animats wrote: post #31

The article mentions that too much effort is going into teaching arithmetic by different means. Is that really necessary? Once kids get addition, subtraction, and multiplication as useful operations, and know what division is for, that kind of covers it. (Long division by hand is such a clunky operation, and done so much better by calculators, it may not be worth teaching any more.) "I like having low self-esteem. It…

I have been hearing this from my kids' teachers as well. They're moving to spending less time on time-consuming operations like long-form division (because calculators allowed on tests and relied on for even textbook exercises).

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...

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#70

Post by charlesdm »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #67
charlesdm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. 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 so…

If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patt…

There's definitely a difference between the result, and the way something was built or put together. I'd congratulate them on the result and tell them what they did right, code wise. I'd also perhaps point out some (major) areas where they could've done better, so they could take that knowledge and use it in the next app or game they decide to build.
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