This week the New York Times’ most emailed article, Professor@ University.edu, Subject: Why It’s All About Me, exposed professors’ growing frustration over undergraduates who expect their professors to be infinitely available. It’s true: students these days seem to expect us professors to be round-the-clock advice columnists, personal tutors, and career advisors. They email us 24/7 with inane, inappropriate, and unreasonable requests.
But what the Times story missed, in my humble opinion, is the root cause of this: It ain’t email. It’s the self-esteem movement.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great that schools and parents across the land are trying to make kids feel better about themselves. Who wouldn’t want children to be happy about who they are and what they do? But this trend has run amok.
Before I had a kid, all I saw was the end result of this: undergraduates who expected to be praised and rewarded for continuing to breathe without mechanical assistance; students who collapsed in a heap of self-pity, doubt, and fury if given less than the highest grade on their mediocre work.
Now that I have a kid in kindergarten, I see the early causes of this: people who think that children must be praised every moment and never, never criticized lest they wilt like shade-loving plants left out in complete sun. I’m happy to say my child’s teacher is not a self-esteem fanatic. But oh, how many parents around us are! These are people who think they can never discipline or correct their children, because it might make those children Feel Bad.
As a consequence, an astonishing number of children around us are obnoxious, unfocused, and fully convinced of their right to do whatever the hell they please. I know exactly what these kids are going to be like in college: They are going to be the ones who—because the self-esteem movement teaches this—believe that their grades are the same as their identities. Their logic will go like this: They are nice people, so they deserve all A’s. If you give them less than an A, you think they are not a nice person. So the B is not really a reflection of their talents or efforts, it is a reflection of how Professor Smith Doesn’t Like Me, i.e., how Professor Smith Is Mean and Not Dedicated to My Learning.
Blah!
At the risk of bragging, let me just say that people remark frequently on what a nice, courteous, well-behaved, thoughtful, helpful child I have. Let me also say that this observation is too often followed by, “You’re so lucky he came with good genes!” Now, my kid’s father is pretty terrific—I don’t doubt our son came from good stock—but give me a break! We work at this! The reason our kid is a good kid is because we are conscientious objectors to the travesty known as the Self-Esteem Movement. We actually discipline our child. We do not praise him for doing what we simply expect of him. Sure, we praise him when he goes the extra step, but he is not rewarded with stickers and kisses for picking up his socks, clearing his place, saying “please” and “thank you,” and wiping his own ass. (I admit that, when these were new skills for him, we offered encouragement.)
I like to think that, if my child grows up to land in a college class and gets a “B” on a paper, he will either live with that, or he’ll think about working harder to understand how to meet the professor’s expectations for an “A”. He won’t collapse and conclude that the “B” either means he or the professor is a terrible person.
I’m raising my son to understand what Dr. King understood: He should judge himself and others by the content of their characters, and the way that character is manifested, not their Inherent Specialness or their grades. I hope my child never says to a professor what one student said to me: “How could you give me a ‘B’ on my paper when I though you liked me?”