Self -esteem

The kids are off from school this week so I haven't had much time to post. Did you miss me?

A small newspaper held a contest in our local high school to encourage kids to write letters to the editor. It was open to all of the students and the paper said it would print every letter it received. Some of the letters were great, the students had some interesting opinions and all in all I think it was a teriffic idea. A few of the letters had some grammatical errors and a few were truly unreadable. I felt sorry for these kids who seemed to be completely incapable of expressing a thought coherently on paper.

The following week there was an editorial about how embarrassingly bad some of the letters were. It also questioned the merit of financing a proposed expansion/renovation of the high school when they clearly can't teach basic skills.

This week there was a letter from an English teacher at the high school blasting the paper for ridiculing the students and only addressing the style of the letters and not the content. He felt that the important thing was that they speak out in a public forum and also said "It is true that spell check is the most revision some students are willing to do, but this was not an essay contest."

First of all, I think the paper could have shown some kindness to the students with the most egregious problems and asked them to revise their letters before they printed them. I don't think it was right to use them to make a point about the crap job the school was doing. However, the english teachers at that school should have insisted on at least looking at the letters before they were sent out as well as explaining to the students that it isn't just what you say that is important, it's how you say it that matters too. I totally reject the teacher's assertion that a letter to the editor should not be as well written as an entry in an essay contest. These letters were going to be read by a fair portion of the community and like it or not, judged by the community so I think it is actually more important than an essay contest. I also got a sense from the tone of his letter that he was saying "Let's not hurt their precious feelings, they're doing the best they can" because self-esteem is sooooo important.

These were mostly juniors and seniors in high school. If they can't write a simple letter and express a thought concisely in one to two paragraphs, what is going to happen to them in college or when they are expected to write something for a job. Nobody is going to worry about their feelings then. I find the whole goal of raising self esteem laughable. How you feel about yourself is often a by product of reflecting on your accomplishments. If you fail at something it's ok to feel bad, that can be a motivator. I don't think you should feel good about yourself no matter what, sometimes we need to change.