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Category Archives: self-esteem movement

A Conspiracy Theory that turned out to be Real

05 Apr

On July 4, 1776, The Declaration of Independence said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Read Slaying Goliath, and learn that some of the wealthiest and most powerful Americans are trying to take away our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I was a public school teacher in California from 1975 – 2005. During those thirty years, I worked 60 to 100 hours a week during the school year. I took work home seven days a week and couldn’t wait for the winter and spring breaks, not because of the time off from teaching, but because I’d have time to catch up correcting student work. After all, teachers have to sleep, too.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan released a report that was a lie. That report was called “A Nation at Risk,” and it painted the nation’s public schools as failures.  After that misleading report, teachers were called lazy and incompetent. The public schools were blamed for the prison population in the United States that was really caused by Presidents Nixon and Reagan’s war on recreational drugs like marijuana.

The critics of the public schools even came up with a misleading term that was also a lie. It was called “The school to prison pipeline.” There has never been a school to prison pipeline in the United States.

After “A Nation at Risk,” came the Self Esteem Movement that got its start in Catholic K-12 schools and from the pulpit of evangelical Christian churches. When that failed, teachers were blamed again. However, the majority of teachers, including me, did not agree with the Self Esteem Movement that put pressure on us to stop failing students that refused to learn and inflate grades so children would feel good about themselves, even if they didn’t deserve it.

That top-down failure was followed by The Whole Language Approach to teaching. English Lit Teachers like me were told to stop teaching mechanics, grammar, and spelling because it was boring. We were told that the kids could learn that boring stuff just by reading on their own, except most kids do not read on their own.

A decade later, when that Whole Language Approach that was forced on teachers also failed, teachers were blamed again.

That is why, back in the 1980s, I started to think there was a conspiracy theory to destroy the public schools. Over the years, as one top-down movement after another to improve the public schools failed, I convinced myself that it could not be right that someone was trying to destroy our public schools.

Who could be that cruel, that greedy, that monstrous, to deliberately demonize teachers and blame them for almost every problem in the United States? The critics said teachers were lazy. The critics said we were incompetent. The critics said our labor unions were corrupt and were getting in the way of improving the public schools.

I retired from teaching in 2005 and swore that if I was forced to teach again, I’d instead rejoin the U.S. Marines and fight in Afghanistan against Islamic terrorists. Since I had already served in the Marines and fought in Vietnam before I was a teacher, I knew that being a teacher was way worse because of the way teachers are treated in this country.

When I retired, I took a 40-percent pay cut and left without medical insurance, but the critics said teachers were greedy, and our retirement systems would cause the states to go bankrupt. I live in California, and about 6% of the state’s annual budget goes to support the teacher retirement system.

If you believe that retired teachers are greedy, let me sell you a vacation home on a moon orbiting Saturn. I understand the view of Saturn’s rings are incredible.

Read Slaying Goliath, and you will learn that what I suspected back in the 1980s was real. There has been a movement in the United States for decades to replace the nation’s democratic, transparent, public schools and destroy the teaching profession. That disruptive movement wants to replace the people’s public school with a profit-driven, often corrupt, secretive, autocratic, private school system that operates without rules and oversight.

Read Slaying Goliath, and you will learn that the leaders of the publicly funded, private-sector charter school industry are mostly deceivers and liars.

Read Slaying Goliath, and you will learn that the leaders of the publicly-funded private/religious voucher school industry are also mostly deceivers and liars.

When you read Slaying Goliath, you will learn who those liars are. You will learn who is behind the disruption of our public schools and how they are subverting our Constitutional Republic to strip us of our rights. Then maybe you will be angry enough to support and even join the passionate resistance of parents, grandparents, teachers, and children that are already fighting to save America’s public schools.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and disabled Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

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Posted by on April 5, 2020 in American Public Schools, book promotion, child poverty in the US, Education, English, family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, NCLB, Obama's Race to the Top, politics, propaganda and lies, Public School, Reading, Sandia Report, self-esteem movement, Standardized Testing, Teaching

 

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Are the good-old Politically Correct Parent Wars heating up?

23 Jan

When Amy Chua came out with her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011, thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s headline Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior—a headline that Chua didn’t write—a firestorm of criticism was unleashed. Chua even received death threats and because I defended her parenting methods in the Amazon forum for her memoir, my own published work was attacked for the first time in more than three years by a small rash of 1-star reviews.

Get ready for the next Parenting Wars, because Chua has another book coming out this February called The Triple Package, and it’s already been attacked by critics who hate her parenting methods. In this nonfiction book, Amy Chua is not alone. Her husband Jed Rubenfeld is the co-author; Rubenfeld is an author in his own right with several novels under his belt—his The Interpretation of Murder, an international bestseller that’s sold more than one-million copies worldwide has enough 1 and 2-star reviews of his book on Amazon to lower its average to 3.7 out of 5 stars. Is it possible that his wife’s politically-correct critics punished him for just being her husband? If so, these are despicable people; they are bullies—proof that there are many Americans who hate anything that goes against what they believe regardless of the facts, and the message is strong: “If you prove what I think is wrong, I’ll gang up on you and see that you pay for it!”

Information for The Triple Package on Amazon says, “Americans are taught that everyone is equal, that no group is superior to another. But remarkably, all of America’s most successful groups believe (even if they don’t say so aloud) that they’re exceptional, chosen, and superior in some way. Americans are taught that self-esteem—feeling good about yourself—is the key to a successful life. But in all of America’s most successful groups, people tend to feel insecure, inadequate, that they have to prove themselves. America today spreads a message of immediate gratification, living for the moment. But all of America’s most successful groups cultivate heightened discipline and impulse control.”

If you watch the following embedded video (with more than 90,000 views), you will hear The (two) Young Turks crucify Chua and Rubenfeld as racists and elitists. But how can this be true when the authors are only pointing out cultural traits that offer advantages that may lead to success later in life—cultural traits found among Nigerians who are black; Chinese and Indians who are Asian; Iranians who are Middle Eastern and Muslims; Lebanese-Americans; Mormons—a minority among religions—who are not Christians; Cubans who are Latino, and Jews who may be found all over the world representing people of all races and ethnic groups. For instance, there are Chinese Jews, Egyptian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Indian Jews; etc.  It’s even estimated that there are more than 200,000 African-American Jews.

In fact, a piece on The Triple Package that appeared at the NationalPost.org concluded: “sociologists and anthropologists said that despite its merits, the discussion of cultural difference inevitably becomes a minefield of assumptions, stereotypes and political correctness, especially when considered in the Western context.”

Are the critics who hate Chua and Rubenfeld’s message denialists who refuse to accept facts that prove we’re not all born—and raised—equally, and does that make the critics a different type of elitist—one who is more dangerous?

I’m convinced that what the Young Turks say in the first video reveals more about how political correctness guides the average American’s thinking, because I was attacked on Diane Ravitch’s Blog by another commenter when I dared to point out that every racial group has a different average IQ. Such talk was called racist—even though studies show this fact is true.

In addition, my wife and I watched a documentary called First Position. It was excellent and even though it wasn’t about parenting and the focus was on youth ballet, the underlying theme had everything to do with parenting.

One blurb on Amazon said: “Every year, thousands of aspiring dancers enter one of the world’s most prestigious ballet competitions, the Youth America Grand Prix, where lifelong dreams are at stake. In the final round, with hundreds competing for only a handful of elite scholarships and contracts, practice and discipline are paramount, and nothing short of perfection is expected.”

In the film, we see parents supporting, encouraging; even pressuring [I’m sure that Chua’s critics will claim this is another example of bullying] their kids not to give up. Does that make those parents wrong too? I don’t think so.

There is no instant gratification in youth ballet. To stand a chance at success means spending long hours practicing ballet moves even when in severe crippling pain—and only a few can succeed and reach the top while many fail and every child is aware of the odds. There are no false assumptions. These kids live in a world that is not pumped up with hollow promises that their dreams will come true just because they dream it.

Chua and Rubenfeld’s Triple Package and the film First Position make a strong case against the self-esteem driven, politically-correct method for parenting in the United States.

The truth is that we are not all born equal, and there are no guarantees—none—that what a child dreams will come true.

But the law and other people should treat us as equals; no one should be denied the opportunity to at least attempt to achieve their goals and dreams. Like a lottery, we should at least be allowed to buy a ticket.

That means some of us will have to work harder at the chance to succeed at what we want out of life, and it helps to have tough parents pushing, encouraging—maybe even using a few bully tactics through tough love—to push a child/teen to go that extra mile. Dreaming is not enough.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on January 23, 2014 in family values, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success: Part 3 of 3

20 Jan

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Using IQ as an indication of the odds of success may be measured from other comparisons besides race.

First—Let’s look at income (World Top Incomes Database; Real U.S. 2010 dollars):

Psychology Today.com reports, The average IQ of individuals in the top 1% who earned $857,477  was 137.  The next level was the top .1% with an average income of $3,693,111 and an average IQ of 149.  Then we have the top .01% earning on average $16,267,243 with an average IQ of 160.

The other 99 percent with an annual income range of $0 to $335,869 had IQ’s—on average—that ranged from 60 to 136.

Second—a few examples of the average IQ of college majors:

The average IQ of a Physics and Astronomy major was 133; Mathematics Sciences 130; Engineering 126; Chemistry 124; Humanities & Arts 120; Agriculture 115; Health and Medical Sciences 111; Education 110, and Social Work 103. For the complete list, I suggest you click on Statistics Brain.com.

Third—Number of billionaires by continent in US dollars:

Africa has 13 (population of 995 million—1 for every 76.5 million people)

Asia 412 (4.14 billion—1 for every 10.048 million)

Europe 390 (739 million—1 for every 1.89 million)

North America 486 (529 million—1 for every 1.088 million)

South America 51 (386 million—1 for every 7.56 million)

Four— Poverty and low IQ:

Ascd.org says, “The effect of environment on the IQ of young children can be significant, particularly for children living in poverty. As the influence of poverty decreases, the importance of environmental conditions as a limiting factor on intelligence also decreases. By addressing the environmental issues created by poverty, it may be possible to weaken the link between low socioeconomic status and poor student performance on IQ (and other) tests.”

“A childhood spent in poverty often sets the stage for a lifetime of setbacks. Secure attachments and stable environments, so vitally important to the social and emotional development of young children, are often denied to our neediest kids. These children experience more stress due to loneliness, aggression, isolation, and deviance in their peer relationships, and they are more likely to describe feeling deprived, embarrassed, picked on, or bullied. As a result, they more often face future struggles in marital and other relationships.” (Ascd.org says)

Psycnet.apa.org says, “It is posited that low IQ children may be likely to engage in delinquent behavior because their poor verbal abilities limit their opportunities to obtain rewards in the school environment.”

Leading from the Sandbox.com says, “Signs of poor EQ include the inability to listen to others, defensiveness, unawareness of how we come across, lack of sensitivity to others’ feelings, an inability to deal constructively with conflict, a drive to control others, narcissism, and the need to have our own way.”

Conclusion: The evidence suggests that average to high IQ—when a child lives in a middle income or higher environment with stable parents—does have a vital role to play in later success, but IQ by itself isn’t enough to predict outcomes.

It is also possible, but rare, for a child to escape poverty as an adult. The odds are also against children with IQ’s lower than average.

In the end—no matter the IQ; SQ; EQ or LDs—parent involvement is the key that overcomes almost all obstacles to a child’s education. A key study in the UK says:” Overall, research has consistently shown that parental involvement in children’s education does make a positive difference to pupils’ achievement.” (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

Based on 49 studies, It is noted that the bulk of the research finds that a positive learning environment at home has a powerful impact on student achievement. The second approach is illustrated by Rhoda Becher’s extensive review of parent education literature, which finds numerous studies documenting effects of school-based programs that train low-income parents to work with their children. Effects include significantly improved language skills, test performance, and school behavior, as well as important effects on the general educational process. The third approach is illustrated by studies of community involvement which suggest that the degree of parent and community interest in high quality education is the critical factor in the impact of the school environment on the achievement and educational aspirations of students. (eric.ed.gov)

When the parents are not part of the learning process; are dysfunctional and/or abusive, the odds are against success no matter what teachers do in the classroom.

Return to Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success in life: Part 2 or start with Part 1

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_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up

 
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Posted by on January 20, 2014 in child abuse, Education, family values, media, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success: Part 2 of 3

19 Jan

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I don’t disagree with evidence from studies that offer theories that even slow learners with lower IQ’s may achieve success in life but it’s arguable that the lower the IQ, the tougher the odds are of a child achieving their dreams as an adult later in life depending on what those dreams are—after all, few end up becoming President of the United States—and for instance: billionaires, millionaires, rocket scientists, super models, Academy Award winning actors, Grammy winners, or win gold medals at the Olympics.

While a high IQ is not a ticket to success and wealth, the evidence suggests that it helps. It’s also arguable that a person with a high IQ who also has high social intelligence (SQ/SI) stands a much better chance at success and a better quality of life than someone with a low IQ and high SQ/SI. Other factors that lead to the success of a child achieving their dreams later as an adult are motivation, discipline, perseverance, the ability to learn from failure, and evidence suggests that writing detailed goals and reading those goals daily also helps. There’s also emotional intelligence that some think is important. (examiner.com)

My biggest sin to the politically correct camp of self-esteem was to dare to mention the difference in average IQ’s between racial groups. The word one commenter used was racism. However, the fact remains that there is a difference in average IQ’s between racial groups.

Princeton.edu says, “The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States.” Forgive me if I don’t post that IQ comparison here. If interested, Google it.

Be warned, if you dare to step on this politically correct sacred ground that has been anointed by the holy water of the self-esteem movement, tread carefully.

However, it is arguable that IQ does play an important role in success and it’s not racist to say so. Instead of looking at IQ by race, we may also compare average IQ by country with the highest average IQ found in Asia where the top five are located: Hong Kong #1; South Korea #2; Japan #3; Taiwan #4, and Singapore #5. Those who argue that IQ tests are flawed because they were created by Caucasians in Europe/the United States, take note of the top five.

The United States is ranked #19 [tied with Hungry, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, France, Mongolia, and Norway] with an average IQ of 98 and Finland is #25 with an average IQ of 97.

The ten countries with the lowest average IQ are all in Africa. Equatorial Guinea is the lowest with an average of 59. (Statistic Brain.com and Nation Master.com)

Continued on January 20, 2014 in Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success in life: Part 3 or start with Part 1

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_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on January 19, 2014 in Education, family values, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success in life: Part 1 of 3

18 Jan

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Over on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, a site to discuss better education for all [highly recommended to discover what’s going on in public education in the United States], I left a comment for one of her posts that mentioned an author’s lecture I attended back in the 1980s. The comment was about a memoir written by the father of a son who was retarded [the father/author’s words not mine]. The son also had learning disabilities.  After more than thirty years, all I remembered was the basics and I think the father said his son had an IQ of 80 [I could be wrong. It might have been lower]. I’ve forgotten the name of the author and his memoir. I once had a video of the lecture but loaned it to another teacher who loaned it to another teacher and I never saw the video again.

Anyway, the anonymous person who replied to my comment didn’t think the kid was retarded with an 80 IQ, and it turns out this anonymous commenter was right.  He also said 80 wasn’t far from average—also correct.

I attended that lecture more than thirty years ago, and the son did have learning disabilities severe enough to land him in special education classes. The parents had to fight to get him in regular classes. They also unplugged the TV at home and stored it on a shelf in the garage where it sat until both of their children were in college. The TV was replaced with family reading time. The result, the son ended up at Harvard and graduated with a degree in engineering.

The Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition IQ Classification [it’s obvious that the language has been changed to placate critics of IQ tests—check out older versions of IQ tests to see what I mean]:

40-54: Moderately impaired or delayed
55-69: Mildly impaired or delayed
70-79: Borderline impaired or delayed
80-89: Low average
90-109: Average
110-119: High average
120-129: Superior
130-144: Gifted or very advanced
145-160: Very gifted or highly advanced

There’s also the Current Wechsler IQ classification; the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities; the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test, etc.

I don’t want to spend much time on learning disabilities [LD], because I want to focus on the small fire that I seemed to have started when I brought up IQ on Ravitch’s Blog. But  LD’s should be mentioned because they may affect children with even high IQ’s. The home environment, lifestyle, health, diet and exercise also play an important role in a child’s ability to learn.

LD’s are a group of varying disorders that have a negative impact on learning. They may affect a child’s [or adults] ability to speak, listen, think, read, write, spell or compute. The most prevalent LD is in the area of reading, known as dyslexia, and as  child I had severe dyslexia; so did my older brother, but the education experts didn’t know what dyslexia was in the early 1950s. Instead, my mother was told that I was so retarded I would never learn to read or write. Years later when I took my first IQ test, the results said I had an IQ of 135, and it’s obvious that I overcame the dyslexia and learned to read and write, but my brother didn’t.

It seems that one politically-correct camp in the United States and maybe Europe—because I have no idea where the critics of IQ live—believe we shouldn’t use IQ to measure a child’s intelligence. In fact, this politically correct group wants IQ removed as a way to measure intelligence probably because it might hurt the child self-esteem. In fact, the politically correct self-esteem movement would like to do away with all competition, grades and GPA ranking. They’ve had some success in this area—one of the causes of dumbing down the schools in the United States.

Continued on January 19, 2014 in Looking at IQ and learning if the level of intelligence has anything to do with success in life: Part 2

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_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on January 18, 2014 in Education, family values, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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The Golden Age of Education in America is Today

12 Aug

The United States has never had a Golden Age of Education unless it is happening today, but the media and politicians with political/religious agendas—without exception—misrepresent the truth.  The art of deception is based on picking the facts you want the public to hear, and what’s left out of the message is what leads people to believe something that is false.

For example, the Smithsonian Magazine reported on July 30, 2013 that No, You’re Probably Not Smarter Than a 1912-Era 8th Grader. I wanted to read this piece when it first came out but didn’t get a chance until August 8th.

The piece goes into detail showing the sort of questions 8th graders were expected to know in 1912. What the Smithsonian does not mention is how many children were attending 8th grade in 1912 compared to today.

In 1912, 61.3% of 5-to-19-year-old whites were enrolled in school and less than 10% would graduate from high school. That percentage was even lower for Blacks and other races.

There is a huge difference between less than 10% of children motivated to learn who have supporting parents and the ninety percent of children who did not.

In fact, in 1918, every state required children to only complete elementary school.  And a movement in 1920 to extend compulsory education to 12th grade failed and would not be revived until after World War II.

WiseGeek.org says, “Prior to the passing of compulsory school attendance laws, education was primarily localized and available only to the wealthy, and it often included religious teachings. …

“By the 1950s, compulsory education had become well established, but the K-12 education system was really still in its infancy. Schools were still primarily localized, but education was no longer available only to the wealthy. Even in the 1950s, however, segregation by race was still common practice in public schools in the US.

“Then in 1954, in the US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.”

The Smithsonian piece is misleading because in 1912, students attending school were there because their parents believed in the value of an education, and sending children to school was still a luxury for most Americans who could not afford to send a child to school or felt an education was a waste of time.

Back then, many poor parents even sold their children as young as age five into servitude in the coal mines or factories—those children never had a chance to go to school. In some industrial cities, half the workforce was made up of children, who were much cheaper to employ and easier to manage than teenagers or adults. In some states it was also legal for parents to sell children into prostitution.

How bad was it? For example, in 1916, President Wilson pushed the Keating-Owen Act through Congress barring interstate commerce of goods produced by child labor, but a conservative U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1918 that this law was unconstitutional because it infringed on states’ rights and denied children the freedom to contract to work. Source: Scholastic.com [recommended reading]

And in 1912, there was no parent-driven self-esteem movement that values dreams, having fun and feeling good over working hard to earn an education. There was also no TV, no video games, and no cell phones. A lot has changed in the last century.

I also compared the high school graduation rate for 17/18 year olds in 1912 with today. According to A Hundred Years Ago.com, “only 20% of youth attended high school in 1911 and less than 10% graduated.”

Today, even most high school dropouts are better educated than 90% of Americans in 1912. Since 1968, the US high school graduation rate has fluctuated in the 70% range and it has never been higher in the history of this country. In 2012, Wisconsin had the highest rate at 90% with Vermont a close 89.6%.

In 2012, The Washington Post reported, “Researchers found that graduation rates vary by race, with 91.8 percent of Asian students, 82 percent of whites, 65.9 percent of Hispanics and 63.5 percent of blacks graduating on time.”

If you are interested in the graduation rate of each state, click Governing.com, and you will discover that even the state with the lowest graduation rate today beats 1912 by a wide margin.

Do not be fooled again, because politicians, the media and critics of public education will keep telling us that the public education system in America is failing, but now you know the truth. It’s not perfect but it has never been better and it is still evolving—for better or worse.

Discover Educating Children is a Partnership

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

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Posted by on August 12, 2013 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, self-esteem movement, Teaching

 

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Fixing the Self-Esteem Train Wreck

05 Jul

The self-esteem generation may be fixing the cultural train wreck caused by the average Baby Boomer parent.

But before I talk about how the Self-Esteem Generation—known as the Me, Me, Me people or the Millennials—are going to do this, I want to point out some of the damage the Baby Boomer parents have already heaped on their children.

First, what has led modern soldiers to become twice as susceptible to suicide?

When I was in the U.S. Marines in the 1960s, we lived in communal barracks—we did not have our own TV or our own rooms—and there are stark psychological differences between today’s 20-somethings and the mindsets of veterans of past generations, according to David Rudd, co-founder and scientific director of the National Center for Veteran Studies based at the University of Utah.

Today, “Entitlement has grown in younger generations and society has embraced that, giving in to the entitlement … The military has made decisions in accommodating these kinds of requests for more privacy and more seclusion by isolating (soldiers) even further.” Source: WND Health.com

Second, from The Huffington Post we learn that “They (the Millennials) appear choosy or picky … they want work to have meaning, and they love being heard by supervisors even though they’re young and have no experience. How does one find meaning pushing a broom or working at a fast-food joint?

Their work ethic appears low … but seventy-one percent want coworkers to be like a second family, and work should be fun. What happens if work isn’t fun and there is no other job available?

Fifty percent would rather have no job, than have a job they hate, but who pays the bills if you refuse to work: daddy, mommy, uncle, aunt, grandpa, grandma?

Seventy-six percent believe “my boss could learn a lot from me.”

Sixty-five percent say “I should be mentoring older coworkers when it comes to tech and getting things done.” If you have a low work ethic, how is that going to compute?

Sixty percent agree “if I can’t find a job I like, I will try and figure out a way to create my own job.” Imagine, everyone will be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, and once they are all rich and famous who is going to do the boring jobs that are not fun—robots?

A full 70 percent of Millennials say they need me time at work, almost twice as much as Baby Boomers.

But there may be hope on the horizon because Millennials as (married or unmarried) parents might be raising children that may not join the ranks of the Me, Me, Me Generation, because Resilience is the new buzzword these days (in young parenting circles). It permeates contemporary non-fiction within the genre of parenting books and beyond. Gone are the days of Baby Einstein and trophies just for showing up (a product of the self-esteem movement).

Now the emphasis is on learning through failure and character building. It’s on healing through the tough skin you develop after a fall. Learning through natural resistance and appropriately measured adversity are the new Mozart sonatas for developing children. But learning through trial and error can only happen if we dare to remove the bubblewrap. And hence Millennials will have to allow their children to experience risks and disappointment they never faced. Source: Millennials as Parents – Multigenerational Living May Build a Modern Village by Anne Boysen

And if Millennial parents succeed in fixing the self-esteem train wreck their parents caused, America will owe them a debt of gratitude they are sure to collect.

Discover The Results of Parenting Gone Wrong

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on July 5, 2013 in family values, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 4/4

26 May

By now, members of the Me (parents), or Me Me Me Generation (children of Baby Boomers) who might be reading this series of posts have become angry and may accuse me of being an idiot and even a racist for daring to say too many white parents have raised a generation of narcissists—about 30 million. Of course that leaves 50 million that were not raised by parents obsessed with the self-esteem of his or her child.

Here’s the rub, over a thirty year period, I saw it happening in my classroom. I don’t need the studies that Joel Stein refers to in his Time Magazine piece. I taught about 6,000 students in the public schools from 1975 to 2005. In the 1970s the self-esteem narcissist epidemic was just getting started and in the late 70s and early 80s, many of my students cooperated in the classroom, read the short stories, read the books and actually studied and worked.

Then we come to the 30 million, because if you are perfect, why read, why study, why work? If the teacher isn’t entertaining the students and students feel bored, why pay attention, why cooperate? And narcissists are very loud and sure of themselves—in fact, they are convinced that everyone else is wrong.

It may even be too late to fix what’s broken, because there is an industry that feeds this cult of self-esteem and it may be impossible to stop this terminal illness from killing our culture through narcissism.

But maybe it isn’t too late, because we don’t see this obsessive level of narcissism among most minority parents and children, and it has been predicted that minorities will be the majority by 2043. Maybe America’s minorities—along with the few white parents who aren’t inflating the self-esteem of their children—will save this country by not raising children to grow up and become sociopathic narcissists.

What has the price of inflated self-esteem been so far? To find out, I suggest you read Joel Stein’s piece in Time Magazine—the May 20, 2013 issue.

– a few facts for thought –

In 1950, the U.S. suicide rate for ages 15 – 24 was 4.5 per 100,000. These suicides were from members of the Greatest Generation born 1901 – 1945.

In 2005, the suicide rate for ages 15 – 24—all white members of the Millennial generation—was 10.7 per 100,000 (an increase of 238% compared to 1950), but for nonwhites of the same Millennial generation, that number was 7.4 and for Blacks 6.7 per 100,000.

However, for Baby Boomers, the U.S. suicide rate decreased in 2003 compared to 1950. In 1950, suicide for ages 45 -54 was 20.9 per 100,000 compared to 15.9 in 2003—the Baby Boom generation.

Note: suicide rates increase dramatically after age 45 but have improved significantly since 1950. In 1950, the suicide rate age 65 years and older was 30 per 100,000. In 2003, the suicide rate for the same age group dropped to 14.6 per 100,000. Source: Suicide.org

The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers were not raised by self-esteem obsessed parents. Therefore, has the cult of self-esteem practiced mostly among white middle-class parents of the Baby Boom generation caused the increase in suicides to more than double for white Americans born to the Millennial generation or is that just a coincidence?

Return to The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3 or start with Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 26, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3/4

25 May

Just because 80 million were born into the Millennial generation, that doesn’t mean they were all raised by parents obsessed with self-esteem.

For example, the Millennials “are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort of youth in the nation’s history. Among those ages 13 to 29: 18.5% are Hispanic; 14.2% are Black; 4.3% are Asian; 3.2% are mixed race or other; and 58.8%—a record low—are White.”  Source: The Society Pages.org

Then there are the immigrants. In 2010, there were 40 million in the US, and most immigrant parents raise children differently—than the average White American born parent—often practicing different forms of authoritarian parenting styles found in other countries. Source: Center for Immigration Studies

In addition, research has found that authoritarian parenting is more common among African Americans than among European Americans (Hill & Bush, 2001). … Furthermore, research shows that the authoritarian parenting style is widely accepted by both middle-class African American parents, and their children (Smetana, 2000). Source: Adolescent Health-Risk Behaviors: The Effect of Perceived Parenting Style and Race

Moreover, “efforts to boost the self-esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes by counterproductive.” The findings of this study did not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. Source: Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?

“Teens whose parents exercise more control over their teens’ activities are less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors (Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984), smoke, use alcohol or other drugs (Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, & Steinberg, 1993; Shakib et al., 2003), and engage in sexually risky behavior (Hogan & Kitagawa, 1985;Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Newcomer & Udry, 1987).

“Latino youth are no exception to these patterns. … Drawing on previous work, we hypothesize that Mexican-origin youth with parents who exercise firm control (authoritative and authoritarian) will have fewer behavior problems and that teens with supportive parents (authoritative and permissive) will have better emotional well-being. …

“There is much concern that as the duration of exposure to U.S. society and level of acculturation rise, children exhibit increasingly poor outcomes, similar to those of children from the majority (white) culture. …

“Behavioral outcomes and depression were worse for third generation teens from permissive families than for first-and second-generation teens from similar families. Generational patterns in behavioral outcomes were similar for teens of disengaged parents, whereas third generation teens of authoritarian parents had fewer behavioral problems than either first-or second-generation teens of similar parents.” Source: Parenting Styles Across Immigrant Generations

It is obvious from the cited studies in this post that most of the parents that belong to the cult of self-esteem are white.

Continued on May 26 in The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 4 or return to Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 25, 2013 in family values, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 2/4

24 May

In 2002, The No Child Left Behind Act was voted into law by Congress and signed by President G. W. Bush. I think this law was a result of pressure from Baby Boomer parents that belonged to the cult of self-esteem, because this law only holds the schools and teachers accountable for education—not the students. If you read the provisions of this act, you will discover that students have no responsibility to learn—none. The responsibility for students to learn is all on the backs of the teachers and the schools.

Merriam-Webster says confidence means “faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way,” and I think the best way to build confidence is to learn how to be successful through failure and hard work.

The same dictionary says self-esteem means the same as self-conceit. Synonyms for self-esteem are ego, pridefulness, self-regard, self-respect, and the antonyms—the opposite meaning—are humbleness, humility and modesty.

The Attraction Forums.com says, “To better understand confidence let’s first clear up some really common misconceptions between confidence and self-esteem. The two are related but are not the same. Confidence is how effective a person feels in a given situation or dealing with a specific task. Self-esteem is how much a person likes themselves and how worthy they feel of receiving good things in life. A person can feel good about themselves (high self-esteem) while not feeling positive about their skill-set in a certain area (confidence).”

And students and adults with a high sense of inflated self-esteem hate to fail.

Today, there are about 80 million Millennials (ages 13 – 32)—also known as Generation Y, mostly the children of the Baby Boomers—in the U.S, but how many are at a high risk of being a member of the ME ME ME Generation that the Time Magazine piece talks about?

Continued on May 5, 2013 in The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3 or return to Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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