There is an interesting article in yesterday’s Washington Times about the effects of too much praise on children.
In the past several decades, the effort to respect, protect and even puff up children’s self-esteem has resulted in a generation of children who expect to win, whose feelings are never hurt and who believe they are the best.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is most commonly known as the Middle School Model, and it’s ubiquitous in the public schools of this country. The idea is to find something good to say to each individual each day, even if it’s something like, “That surely is a nice pair of eyebrow rings you’ve got, Maribeth!” in hopes of increasing students’ self-esteem.
(There’s nothing wrong with being civil (even pleasant, although I have yet to try it) to students, but it should not be mandated.)
I believe that self-esteem is raised through true accomplishment, don’t you?
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Kids are typically so much smarter than we give them credit for being. They know bilge when they hear it — it isn’t their self-esteem that is raised through this mealymouthed drivel, it’s their ego which becomes bloated.
I certainly second the opinions of Bryan and other commentators that true self-esteem is nurtured through valid accomplishments, not empty praise. I think most kids will see right through phony affirmations and interpret them as, “my teacher doesn’t care enough about me to help me accomplish something real and learn to overcome my difficulties.” I take exception, however, to the gross oversimplification of the Middle School Model. Lots of schools have jumped on board the Middle School bandwagon without committing to fully implementing concepts like interdisciplinary teaming and advisory programs. Lots of teachers give lip service to teaching in an interdisciplinary manner (like having students write persuasive essays in history class, or implementing math concepts in their science classroom), when really what they’re doing is wasting weeks on fuzzy “units” that gobble up too much class time.
However, that doesn’t mean they are *really* implementing the middle school model.
We can’t blame the model for the failure of some administrators and teachers to be slipshod in their pedagogy; it’s like blaming the recipe when the cook leaves out ingredients. I’ve taught in crummy middle schools where the principal bragged to parents about our use of teaming, advisory, etc., when these things weren’t really happening in the classrooms. And I’ve attended Middle School Association conventions at the state level, where teams of teachers presented units and examples of student work that showed how well this model can work when put in effect correctly. Check out the History Alive! curriculum as an example of how interdisciplinary instruction can raise the bar for student achievement – exposing students to primary source materials, utilizing artwork to engage students’ interest, providing content-rich writing assignments, and getting kids to remember something about history, which is a challenge with teenagers. :)
The inner-city schools I taught in would switch programs every year, whether it be reading, math, block scheduling, what electives were offered – you name it, it was in constant flux. They’d throw every idea that came down the pike away after a year when it didn’t magically produce increased test scores overnight; yet they never committed to really supporting the ideas they were implementing. I was told by one Instructional Guide that I could integrate mathematics into my history teaching by having the students COUNT THE NUMBER OF PAGES IN THE TEXTBOOK. Clearly, this administrator didn’t “get” the Middle School Model – but she’d gladly explain to parents that we were implementing it!
Sadly, NO model works when the people in charge are incompetent. The idea behind Middle School is for students to have the best of both worlds. A student should have the benefit of a teacher in each subject who has a rich knowledge base to draw upon, preferably a college degree in the content area. To me, this idea is more appealing than one teacher trying to teach a little bit of everything to students in a self-contained classroom. At the same time, the student experiences a sense of community by being part of a team of students who share the same teachers, which allows teachers to get to know the students better – and makes it easier for teachers to coordinate what’s happening in their different classrooms; i.e., the Reading Teacher can assign Animal Farm while the Social Studies teacher discusses communism. Wouldn’t it be great if that were what happened in most of our schools?
And, a word about parents. The mirror for empty affirmations of students’ non-achievements in the classroom is the parent who indulges Little Johnny’s every material desire to keep him happy. I can’t tell you how many parent conferences I’ve sat through where, when we asked how they reinforced discipline at home (after Johnny has brought home a progress report showing, er, no progress), parents say, “well, we were thinking about taking the TV out of his room, or at least limiting the amount of time he spends watching it.” Great. Thanks for the backup.
In sum…I don’t think it’s fair to blame the Model for a. people who don’t implement it correctly, b. people who misrepresent their pedagogical silliness as being “The Model,” and c. a lack of achievement by students whose parents have checked out of the parenting process.
But otherwise, I agree. :)
“We can’t blame the model for the failure of some administrators and teachers to be slipshod in their pedagogy” should read something like, “Don’t blame the model when some administrators and teachers are slipshod in their pedagogy.” Oops. Had I, myself, gone to Middle School, rather than K-8, I’m sure I never would have made such an egregious error. :)
I also apologize for the excessive use of education buzzwords in my previous comment. But at least I avoided the most overused catchphrase…”lifelong learner.”