The above title on a magazine piece caught my eye precisely because it is a distinction that I have been thinking about a lot. I have written in the past about the damage wrought over the last 40 years by American education’s emphasis on developing self-esteem. The self-esteem movement has resulted in ever growing rates of narcissism without any commensurate increase in achievement.
I remember a study from a decade or more ago showing that American students gave themselves the highest rating in the world when asked to evaluate their mathematical abilities. Yet at that time only one in a thousand American high school students would have cracked the top ten percent of Japanese math students.
Thomas H. Benton writing in the Journal of Higher Education of the grade inflation that is so widespread in American higher education describes students “who have never written anything more than short answers on exams who do not read much at all who lack foundational skills in math and science yet are completely convinced of their abilities and resist any criticism of their work to the point of tears and tantrums.”
Even students who are genuinely gifted are harmed by too much harping on their gifts Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has shown. Being told how brilliant they are limits them in unforeseen ways. They are often unwilling to try new subjects in which they are not sure of their success lest they lose their “genius” image. When they find themselves forced to work hard to understand difficult concepts or perform challenging tasks they often freeze or give up easily.
Create a free account to keep reading.
