The role of teachers
To many students, school represents a “second chance” – an opportunity to acquire a better sense of self and a better vision of life than was offered in their home. A teacher who projects confidence in a child’s competence and goodness can be a powerful antidote to a family in which such confidence is lacking and which perhaps the opposite perspective is being conveyed. A teacher who treats boys and girls with respect can provide enlightenment for a child struggling to understand human relationships and who comes from a home where such respect does not exist. A teacher who refuses to accept a child’s negative self-concept and relentlessly holds to a better view of the child’s potential has the power – sometimes – to save a life. A client once said to me, “It was my forth grade teacher who made me aware a different kind of humanity existed than my family – she gave me a vision to inspire me.”
“Feel good” notions of self-esteem are harmful rather than helpful. Yet if one examines the proposals offered to teachers on how to raise students’ self-esteem, many are the kind of trivial nonsense that gives self-esteem a bad name, such as praising and applauding a child for virtually everything he or she does, dismissing the importance of objective accomplishments, handing out gold stars on every possible occasion and propounding an “entitlement” idea of self-esteem that leaves it divorced from both behavior and character. One of the consequences of this approach is to expose to ridicule the whole self-esteem movement in the schools.
A few words, as an aside, on the relationship of self-esteem to external achievements in school or beyond. To observe that the practice of living purposefully is essential to well-realized self-esteem should not be understood to mean that the measure of a person’s worth is his or her external achievements. We admire achievements -in ourselves and in others – and it is natural and appropriate to do so. But this is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or ground of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem, as I have discussed at length elsewhere (Branden, 1994) is not our achievements, but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve all the self-virtues mentioned above.
If the proper goal of education is to provide students with a foundation in the basics needed to function effectively in the modern world, then nothing is more important than building courses on the art of critical thinking into every school curriculum. And if self-esteem means confidence in our ability to cope with the challenges of life, is anything more important that learning how to use one’s mind? This means learning not what to think, but how to think.
The role of teachers II
In an information-age economy, where everyone’s chief capital asset is what they carry between their ears, the ability to think independently is valued far above mere obedience. Individual teachers and designers of curricula need to ask themselves: How does my work contribute to the process of young people becoming thinking, innovative, creative human beings?
To give a child the experience of being accepted and respected does not mean to signal that “I expect nothing of you.” Teachers who want children to give their best must convey that that is what they expect. Children often interpret the absence of such expectations as evidence of contempt.
We know that a teacher’s expectations tends to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. If a teacher expects a student to get an A – or a D – either way, expectations tend to become realities. If a teacher knows how to convey, “I am absolutely convinced you can master this subject and I expect you to, and I will give you all the help you need,” the child feels nurtured, supported, and inspired.
If a proper education has to include an understanding of thinking, it also has to include an understanding of feelings. A teacher is in a position to teach children a rational respect for feelings coupled with an awareness that one can accept a feeling without having to be ruled by it. For self-esteem, this is an issue of the highest importance.
Students can learn to own when they are afraid, and accept it, and (for instance) still go to the dentist when it is necessary to do so. They can learn to admit when they are angry, and talk about it, and not resort to fists. They can learn to recognize when they are hurt, and own the feeling, and not put on a phony act of indifference. They can learn to witness their feelings of impatience and excitement, and breathe into them, and yet not go out to play until they have finished their homework. They can learn to recognize their sexual feelings, and accept them, and not be controlled by them in self-destructive ways. They can learn to recognize and accept their emotions without losing their minds.