Teach Effectively!

Writing in the Washington (DC, US) Times, Paul Greenberg commented about Arkansas’ new governor, Mike Beebe, who objected to schools sending reports to parents about their children’s body mass index. In his column, entitled “Self-Esteem to the Extreme,” Mr. Greenberg used Mr. Beebe’s expression of concern about harming children’s self-esteem as the launching pad for deriding the idea of promoting self-esteem.

Remember self-esteem? It was one of the sillier — and more dangerous — fads in educational circles, which keep going round and round. The theory was that promoting kids’ self-esteem would convince them they were great. And it just might. But that’s no guarantee they are great.

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