We Don't Need Self Esteem - We Need its Antidote

I heard recently about a report on US students' math and science scores in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world. Apparently we suck at both subjects, but especially when we're compared with Asian nations. That wasn't a surprise. Japanese and Korean kids go to school a bazillion hours a day, all year long - hardly an arrangement I want my kids trading up to.

What did surprise me was another stat. Apparently, US students did score higher than any other nation in one category - confidence. Our students think they're great at math. They feel good about themselves and their math skills and believe in themselves (whatever that means). In contrast, students from Asian countries--and this may surprise you--are not only less confident in their abilities, but they actually dislike math and science more than US students do. So how do we make sense of this? I think it's easy - our students don't feel like they need it - we've protected them from such feelings - while the rest of the world knows they need it.

The self-esteem nonsense we've been feeding our kids for a few decades now is bearing its fruit: Our kids no longer excel at math and science because they no longer have to. They feel good and fine right where they're at. And why shouldn't they? They're learners, and we've been teaching them that they're just fine since they were teachable. Unfortunately, in this respect we've done our jobs too well. We've taught them right out of teachability and into complacency. No one is teachable who thinks he knows it all. No one is teachable who thinks she doesn't need the knowledge. 


Of course, no teacher is telling students explicitly that they know it all, or that knowledge and skills are unnecessary. But if a student is told for years that his work is good when it's not, that he should feel proud of his efforts when he should feel shame, if he's been affirmed in things that should have been torn down, then his perception of ability and need will be skewed. In such a head, self becomes the determining agent, and all things, including knowledge, must submit to it.  In "teaching" our kids self-esteem, we've thrown out the one thing our students need most - the humility of a teachable spirit.

So how do we reverse course? Well, we don't just do the opposite. The remedy to being bit by a snake is not to bite it back, but to find an antidote. The opposite of self esteem is not self negation or self immolation or self anything. It's not an inward or even a horizontal perspective at all--it's vertical. The only way to reverse the damage that self-esteem teaching has done and is doing to our kids is to show them who they really are before a holy God. And then show them what God's really done in Christ. We need to teach them that they're not fine, that they're not ok, that they have nothing in themselves on which to base confidence. But we don't stop there. We also teach that there's a place on which to build true confidence that is much broader, much stronger than self. We teach them Christ esteem.

That's what I'll do with my own kids, but as a public school teacher, I don't think I'll be attending in-services on it any time soon.