When somebody hit the "play" button and the sound of the Olympics theme song filled the elementary school auditorium, I turned to my husband and said, "I take it back. You're right."
We were at our oldest daughter's Fifth Grade Awards Ceremony, and my husband had been fuming about the need for attending this particular function; he had a deadline at work and didn't see what the big deal was. I'd been telling him that this was a major event for Rebecca and that it wouldn't kill him to sit through it, so chill out already. But I'd already witnessed a loooong conversation among my fellow fifth grade moms about exactly what type of lanyard to give the kids (an eagle? a sunrise? a star?--and what color should the ribbon be, anyway?), so I had an inkling that maybe things would turn out to be over the top. And Jeesus H. Keyrist, were they ever.
They gave out awards for attendance, of course, and they gave out awards for making the honor roll (of which there were I think about four or five different varieties--the all A's and B's, the all A's, the all A's since third grade, yada yada yada) AND they gave out awards for good citizenship (which was never defined) and for being a safety patrol, and for being in chorus, and for being in band, and for helping move the physical education equipment, and...frankly, I lost track. My kid got a couple of awards, including an award for being in chorus even though she dropped out of chorus in the middle of the year when she discovered that she was not going to get all the solo parts. Still, there it was, a certificate recognizing her "contribution" (which was what? Demonstrating how to act like a diva?) And then the principal got up and told the kids how great they were, just on the remote chance that anybody had missed out on that message, and reminded them of the two Most Important Qualities that a person could cultivate that would predict success in life. These were, in case you were wondering, 1. Charm and 2. Perseverence--which, when you think about it, are exactly the qualities which would make a first-rate con artist, too. And then the kids were awarded their certificates of having made it through fifth grade, while a pantheon of parents hoisted their digital/video cameras to record the moment (including me, yes, I brought a camera too), and despite the request that we all delay our applause until all the names had been read, some families were so charged up by the whole thing that when their child's name was called they carried on as if their kid were Eugene McCarthy and this was the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Finally, when it was all over, the parents were told that if we wanted to (and it seemed to be a strong suggestion that we would want to, being responsible and supportive parents), we could sign out our children for the rest of the day and take them to lunch or something--you know, to reinforce the idea that they were so very, very special. My daughter came up expecting this and was gravely disappointed when I told her no, I had things to do and so did her dad. But that meant she spent part of her afternoon helping put back all the folding chairs, which was actually something useful (and which, maybe, she will someday get an award for).
Don't get me wrong: I think my child is very special. I think she's bright and has enormous potential to be any number of things--a lawyer (she could argue with a fencepost), a singer (nice voice), a veterinarian (she loves animals and has a gift for dealing with them), a writer, an actress (anybody who visits for more than two hours will appreciate her flair for melodrama)....all kinds of things. But at this point in her life, they are mostly potential. Seeds which are still germinating. Flowers which have not yet bloomed.
And this awards crap has me totally flummoxed. I just don't get it. What are these kids going to do when they hit the real world and discover that just Showing Up isn't necessarily cause for a celebratory dinner? (Actually, Forbes recently carried a story on this phenomenon, focusing on how employers were learning to deal with the Millenials, i.e. the college graduates now entering the job market, who have been suckled on the Self Esteem Movement since they were babes; it seems kid gloves are required, and lots of reassuring the new employees that they are Valued Members of a Team.)
To me, self-esteem is like beauty: you can fake it for awhile, but eventually the make-up comes off and the truth emerges. Like real beauty, self-esteem comes largely from within--and yet sometimes the people who have the most reason to feel self-esteem do not, just as some people who are obviously beautiful truly do not believe that they are. The analogy between these two qualities is really pretty good--until you get to this point, which is that, unlike beauty, self-esteem is earned. It is not bestowed; not all the feel-good awards ceremonies in the world can generate it. Self-esteem is not even a God-given right, and if you take issue with this statement I ask you to consider: did Adolf Hitler have great self-esteem? You bet he did.
When I want words of sanity on this topic, I turn to University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, who I have interviewed and whose books I have read (well, two or three of them, anyway) and who makes a whole lotta sense on this topic. Real self-esteem, in Seligman's view, does not come from giving kids awards every time they turn around, or from constantly telling them how beautiful, unique and wonderful they are. Self-esteem comes from dealing with challenges, from mastering difficult tasks and from hard work.
This is a totally common-sense view. Yet it's also an unfashionable one, especially in education circles, where a generation or two of teachers have been taught that "self-esteem" is essential to learning and that "self-esteem" can be applied like Band-Aids over every little personality quirk and flaw (despite lots of recent research which shows no connection between how great a kid feels about himself and how much he actually learns, and if you want a leaping-off point to start looking at this, try this 2003 study by Brown University researchers). This makes me worry about kids today; it makes me worry about my daughter. Lake Wobegon is a fictional place, and in the real world children are not all above average. And even those who are above average in some things are not above average in everything. Moreover, if kids are praised incessantly for simply doing what they should be doing, what are parents supposed to do when they actually do something amazing? What words in our vocabulary are left?
Years ago (I cackle in my dotage), I worked on a newspaper story which concerned the killing of a prisoner inside the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. It was a hard story to do, involving lots of furtive meetings with anonymous sources in parking lots and dealing with authority figures who did not want the story to be told, but I finally got the facts in printable form and wrote it. And then my editor, Wendell "Sonny" Rawls, came over to my desk to read it over, line by line. He asked me lots of questions and when he was done he got up, rolled up the printout and tapped me on the shoulder with it, said, "Good work," and walked off.
Someday, I hope my daughters will have an experience like that. But I fear that after the Fifth Grade Awards Ceremony, the real thing will be such a letdown.