Word: esteeming
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...Despite its dismal threads of crushed self-esteem, anxiety and loneliness, "One Hundred Demons" is one of the prettiest books I have seen. Barry has a charming, appropriately childish cartooning style that belies the amount of work she must put into each page. Bright watercolors fill in the brush lines and each vignette gets a carefully collaged title page, often containing artifacts from the story thereafter. Even when you close the book, the colored pages create a rainbow around the edge. Perfect for comix novices, the easy-to-read layout has just two big panels on each wide page. Barry...
...therefore a delicious coincidence that the next day the New York Times ran a story on the fate of the concept of self-esteem. You know what self-esteem is: according to decades of psychological and educational theory, it's the essential building block for a successful life. A few generations of children, especially minority kids, have been educated according to the theory that they lack self-esteem, that this deficiency is central to any problems they may have in making their way in the world and that the worst thing you can ever do to a child...
Well, guess what? Self-esteem isn't all that it's cracked up to be. In fact, as a brief recounting of Bob Torricelli's career would usefully illustrate, it can be a huge part of the problem. New research has found that self-esteem can be just as high among D students, drunk drivers and former Presidents from Arkansas as it is among Nobel laureates, nuns and New York City fire fighters. In fact, according to research performed by Brad Bushman of Iowa State University and Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University, people with high self-esteem...
...Self-esteem can also be an educational boomerang. Friends of mine who teach today's college students are constantly complaining about the high self-esteem of their students. When the kids have been told from Day One that they can do no wrong, when every grade in high school is assessed so as to make the kid feel good rather than to give an accurate measure of his work, the student can develop self-worth dangerously unrelated to the objective truth. He can then get deeply offended when he's told he is getting a C grade in college...
...course, in these therapized days, reality can be a touchy subject. It's hard to accept that we may not be the best at something or that we genuinely screwed up or that low self-esteem can sometimes be fully justified. But maintaining a robust self-image while being able to absorb difficult criticism is surely worth the effort. It could lead to all sorts of strange occurrences: kids working harder, adults exercising self-control, thieves experiencing--yes--guilt, even grownup politicians taking full and painful responsibility for their actions and words. It's a pity that Torricelli still doesn...