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17th March 2009: Our children need tough love, not self-love
A lawyer who was cycling to work on a chilly day in Munich was pulled over by police when they noticed she had a naked baby in the child seat. According to police, the 18-month-old girl was miserably cold, with a mouth that was 'blue at the corners'. Dumbfounded cops asked the 32-year-old mother what she thought she was doing. She replied that her daughter had refused to let anyone dress her. Children had individual rights, she said, which is why she had 'respected my daughter's wish to remain undressed'.
The self-esteem culture is damaging education. Children need to be told when they get things wrong, so they learn from it.
That German mum was totally barking, obviously. Unfortunately, she was just displaying extreme symptoms of a rabid disease that has infected our own education system.
The virus travelled across the Atlantic and is called the self-esteem agenda. Schools think children can't get enough of it.
So three loud cheers for Dr Carol Craig, an eminent child psychologist. She warned a headteachers' conference at the weekend that teachers who are obsessed with praising children are creating a generation of egotistical monsters.
School staff and parents tiptoe around naughty (oops, sorry, banned word!) or lazy (oops, under-achieving) children because they worry that any criticism will upset them. If you constantly tell Brat A that what really matters is how he feels about himself, then don't be surprised if he reacts with hostility to the news that he has got something wrong.
The conference heard about one poor maths teacher who told a pupil he'd put a zero in the wrong place. The pupil replied: 'Thank you, but I prefer it my way.'
In the cosseted world of self-esteem, there are only opinions, not correct answers. As Dr Craig points out, this spells death to the business of learning. In the long term, it threatens the ability of a young person to be a good employee who can take instruction from wiser and more experienced superiors. Ultimately, it will make him or her a rubbish parent.
As the head of Glasgow's Centre for Confidence and Well-being, Dr Craig is hardly some cane-wielding traditionalist. But even she is adamant that things have gone too far. Schools must be educational establishments, not surrogate psychologists making everyone blissfully ignorant.
At last. So does this mean we can take out our red marker pens and put a big cross through the Government's 'well-being agenda'? Don't count on it.
Not when hundreds of schools have barred teachers from marking in red ink because it's 'confrontational'. One head actually said that a red pen has 'negative, old-school connotations of "Not good enough" '.
Excuse me, sir, but if a child doesn't know they're doing badly, how are they supposed to figure out they need to try harder?
Inevitably, school will sometimes make you feel like a bit of a failure. That's why it's a useful preparation for the blindfold obstacle race we call life.
Yet now Education Secretary Ed Balls is suggesting that school league tables could be replaced by 'report cards'. Instead of hard exam evidence that is embarrassing to the Government and useful to parents, we will get stuff about whether the toilets are welcoming enough.
Dr Craig believes parents have been infected by the self-esteem virus, too. They no longer want to hear if their children have done anything wrong.
I detect the opposite - a growing impatience with school reports of Moonie-like optimism.
One London mum I know was practically tearful with gratitude when a teacher reluctantly admitted her clever little boy could be arrogant and disruptive. 'It felt as if we were finally hearing the truth and could try to do something about his behaviour.'
Giving a child a ludicrously high opinion of themselves is as idiotic and irresponsible as letting a toddler go naked because she doesn't fancy getting dressed.
Who knows, perhaps it's time to introduce children to the old-school concepts of modesty and self-knowledge. They can come in pretty handy.
Self-love is not all you need.
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