As someone vehemently involved with public schools, my instinct was to disregard the statement as biased and uninformed. I sought the counsel of Lexington City Schools Superintendent Rick Kriesky. In a letter to the editor, published Sept. 11, Kriesky responds, "We would respectfully submit that as the stewards of public trust and the shapers of our nation's future, we as educators are honest, transparent, and yes, guilty of being optimistic about our children and our profession. As a profession, we build upon our successes and learn from our failures. In the end, we will always try to educate our children as optimistic seekers of knowledge."
Kriesky's argument is valid and perhaps typical for someone who holds such belief in public education. I proudly share it. However, what happens when we feed the nation's future with undiluted self-confidence? Should there be barriers to optimism in schools? These questions crescendo into one proposition: The cozy realm humanistic psychology has a potential danger in the modern education paradigm.
It is without question that humanistic psychologists have run the show in public education for the past 20 years. There is not a teenager in my generation who did not grow up without posters lining a room adorned with general phrases that I, to this day, have trouble deciphering. "You're smart!" and "Excellent!" glimmered on stickers beside any grade above a B that I received.
The truth is, conversely, a B is not excellent, and I really wasn't that naturally smart — but you better believe I bought into it. I thought I was a demigod. Before I knew it, this confidence manifested in areas beyond academics. I thought for sure I would grow to be a 6-foot geonuclear physicist clad in glasses and lab coat and save the world.
It turns out, though, my dream of being 6-foot tall was nothing more realistic than my dream of being a Power Ranger, I probably couldn't find a lab coat in my size (you know, because of the height thing), I don't need glasses, and there is no such thing as a geonuclear physicist.
It stands to reason that a child may translate "you can" to "you will" or "you do." The dichotomy, however, could not be stronger. A study exhibited in an issue of Scholastic Instructor provided evidence that there is a separation between American students' perception and their reality.
Eighth-graders from the U.S. and South Korea were polled to rate how they perceived their performance in math. Thirty-nine percent of American students claimed they were "excellent" in math, while just six percent of South Korean students marked the same response. These responses were the youths' perception — comparatively, its reality was far off target. When both groups were tested in math, the South Korean students knocked American children off their self-crafted pedestal by almost a dozen percentages.
To return to an earlier statement, general praise is where there is most danger. "You're smart" really does not say much. The effect is much like feeding cotton candy to your child for dinner. It attains nothing but short satisfaction, a syrupy sweet reality that lacks grounding.
More specific approaches yield better results. "You did well reading today," or "you persevered through that long math problem" feeds children a true and healthy reality. They are able to look back and see their growth. It is then that they "feel" the benefits and work hard to imitate the work they previously endured to receive legitimate achievement. It is only with these types of amendments to our method that will save our youths from falling short to an unrealistic approach.
David McCullough Jr.'s viral commencement speech "You're not special" says it the best (I highly recommend reading/listening to the speech in its entirety):
"If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement."
Ultimately, the rah-rah mentality needs a reality check. Students should be praised based on their accomplishments and growth, not by the sheer fact that they breathe air. Teachers and parents alike will deem this heresy, but life doesn't give you a trophy unless you earn one. Instilling love, passion and motivation are facets we should be willing to promote with indignant response, not in the shallow painting we have thus far created.