Losing Faith in Self-Esteem - instilling positive feelings for better academic achievement

School Administrator, Feb, 2000 by Richard Colvin

Researchers have yet to find that instilling positive feelings in students can better academic achievement

The principal of Rib Mountain School in Wausau, Wis., F. Robert Pellant, is no touchyfeely, crunchy-granola type. In fact, most of his 42 years in education have been spent working in high schools and in his last job before coming to Rib Mountain a decade ago he was an assistant high school principal in charge of discipline. So he's not likely to be drawn in by the feel-good fads.

Yet Pellant is an enthusiastic fan of something that's been denounced by some as not only faddish but unproductive and even, by some academics, potentially damaging: boosting the self-esteem of students. "We want kids to enjoy coming to school and feel good about themselves so that they have an opportunity to learn," he says.

To that end, the school has at least two self-esteem assemblies a year, one where professional musicians sing about the value of feeling good about yourself and one in which students perform their own musical celebration of self-esteem.

Teachers at Rib Mountain, which serves a relatively affluent population and is located in the one of the state's top skiing areas, hold class meetings during which students are encouraged to talk about their feelings. The school is big on looping, the practice of having students stay with the same teacher for two or more years, to help them feel more comfortable. Discipline, too, is carefully crafted to avoid negativity. "We hardly ever use the word 'don't,"' Pellant says.

All of that has paid dividends, the veteran principal says. "What works, you use, and I've seen some great things out of it."

Skeptical Attitudes

Rib Mountain is hardly unique. The practices Pellant and his staff at Rib Mountain employ can be seen in schools all across America. Some schools have adopted packaged programs, such as Quest International, which is used in many middle schools. Other programs are called "I Like Me" or even "I Love Me." Yet as engrained as they are, skepticism abounds about the role high self-esteem plays in the healthy development of students.

In part, this reflects a broader cultural tug-of-war between the poles of liberation, self-expression and individualism on the one hand and discipline, responsibility and a sense of community on the other. The debate over self-esteem also is fueled by concerns some parents have that schools overstep their bounds when they go beyond academic pursuits to worrying about the psychological wellbeing of students. There's also a sense, in these affluent times, that parents as well as schools are coddling children, praising them for the least significant accomplishment. In addition, many educational psychologists have turned negative on feeling positive because they don't think schools actually can influence how kids feel about themselves and, even if they could, there's little scientific evidence of a payoff in terms of behavior, academic achievement or much of anything else.

The shootings at Columbine High School outside of Denver last spring intensified the discussion. In the immediate aftermath of the April massacre of 12 students and a teacher, educators said the tragedy showed the dangers of anonymity at a large high school. The fact that the two killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were outsiders with few friends was widely cited as an argument in favor of making sure students feel connected to some adult in the school. Not only would this give the students an outlet for their feelings, it would help educators stay on top of what was going on with students and help them head off problems.

But subsequent revelations showed that, at least superficially, neither Harris nor Klebold suffered from a shortage of self-esteem. Indeed, Harris' diaries, as revealed in Salon, the on-line magazine, reveal a young man with a hyper-inflated view of himself. Harris thought of himself as superior to just about everyone-- Star Wars' fans, people who drive in the slow lane, rich people and so on. "They do consider the human race beneath them," one investigator told Salon.

A strong sense of self-esteem is supposed to serve as a vaccine against such violent outbursts. People who felt good about themselves, self-esteem theorists say, would be less likely to strike out against others. Similarly, positive self-esteem would make it more likely that students would make good choices, eschew drugs, delay sexual activity and, perhaps uppermost in the minds of educators, work harder and do better in school.

Questionable Merits

Much to the consternation of many school administrators, however, those notions are being challenged on a variety of fronts. Academics, including a couple of prominent deans of schools of education and leading educational psychologists, say having high self-esteem certainly feels good. But, contrary to intuition, researchers have yet to find a stable relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement or anything else. According to one review of the literature, more than 10,000 published studies have tried without success to make that link.