lillibet | Self-Esteem in High Places

[n.b. i'm not actually sure what gen i fit into.]

i'd be curious to read the actual study, but honestly, this sounds kind of like crap. i mean "most students didn't want to take my survey because they're too self-absorbed"? does she have *any* idea how many people have spammed the average student looking for them to fill out a survey? it's practically like telemarketing!

for as long as i can remember (granted, not *that* long), american society at large has required one to promote oneself to get ahead professionally. it's certainly become easier with the explosion of the internet, but it's nothing new. people who are seen and who are confident are generally more successful.

also, i'm pretty dismayed by the author's choice of language. it's anything but neutral.

I was a TA for a guy who had just moved to CA from Ohio, and he was firmly of the opinion that many of the California college students he was encountering were indeed narcissistic and had extremely well developed senses of entitlement. He saw this as regional rather than generational, however.

One other thought - insecurity can make one self-absorbed and if not narcissistic, then solipsistic.

i definitely feel like i meet a lot of young people who have a strong sense of entitlement, but i think that's a different thing than narcissism, though the article seems to conflate the two. thanks for helping me figure out my thoughts! :)

i mean, it's one thing to think "i am so great!" and quite another to think "the world should give me everything i want."

Oh, that is an important distinction, thanks. I found myself wanting to agree with the article, and yet I know there's a good chance that I'd answer questions like "I think I am a special person" with a "yes," too, and I don't know that that makes me narcissitic.

But assumptions of entitlement -- oh god. I went to an Ivy, one of the less snobbish ones as it happens, and still huge egos and a smug sense of entitlement characterized a significant percentage of the student body. I saw it in my (well-off white-collar, suburban) high school as well. I'd assumed it was largely a class thing, though...

At 27 I think I fall in between X and Y (I forget what years are what) and I could see things from my own experience that might support their conclusions. Obviously anecdotal evidence is not proof, but the article really reminded me of the sea change that took place in my junior high between 7th and 8th grades, when a new principal took over the school. One of his stated goals was to "improve grades and serve the needs of every child." Which would be great, but...

All of a sudden, I was allowed to test out of some of my extracurriculars (like typing) and get free periods, because I was just that special; we were all required to take a Self-Esteem Class (I was taught to Like Myself Just the Way I Am... I got an A); and at the end of the year we had an Awards Night in which just about every student in the entire school got an award of one kind or another.

And that was just the first year of his reign. I look back on the free periods as a plus and the Self-Esteem class as a minus, and do remember getting lots of awards that year. Academically, I think I escaped largely unscathed... but the kids behind me weren't so lucky. As time went on, junior high teachers were pressured to inflate grades and tough teachers were driven out or transferred; and discipline went all to hell (because they didn't want to damage the kid's self esteem by, y'know, punishing them and stuff). And when those kids arrived at the high school, the teachers (including my dad -- he was a teacher, which is why I know some of the behind-the-scenes stuff) were utterly appalled at the incredibly narcissistic, puffed-up egos of these kids who for the most part were not even prepared to do high school level work.

A few years later, after a big cocaine drug bust, the principal was removed and order restored, which makes for a happy ending I guess. Like I said, one anecdote hardly proves this study correct (I noticed that it was not peer-reviewed) and I don't even know that the timing is right for the trend. But I know, at least, that such phenomena are possible...

Ha! As a teacher I can see similarities between your school and some of the schools I work in.

What drives me crazy is when people think that being utterly permissive and never challenging kids is what's going to give them high self-esteem. How can you be proud of yourself if you have never met a challenge, set a difficult goal and reached it, or had to work for something you wanted?

If life is nothing but a series of placations from the time you enter kindergarten to the time you graduate then you don't feel any better about yourself than a kids who has been challenged because you don't know any other way. In fact these kids are even less able to deal with life because when they encounter challenges in the real world that mommy and daddy can't smooth over they are crushed because they haven't been forced to deal with those things like that in day to day life.

I think people underestimate how resiliant kids can be. It is part of human nature to want to be challenged, and how we cope with adversity teaches us what we are made of and what we can acomplish in life. Kids aren't going to respect a teacher or parent who gives them a free ride, so how can they respect themselves for getting one?

My first thought is that people seem to enjoy wondering what's wrong with the kids today. They seem to like to think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

I roll my eyes at them.

I'm not saying the world *isn't* going to hell in a handbasket, but it certainly seems to be taking its time getting there.

Considering the surveys apparently were only of people who could afford to be in college, I'd say it was self-selecting for a certain degree of entitlement attitude from the very beginning.

that seems to be a bit of a stretch. i would be surprised if they didn't make at least some attempt to get students from a number of different backgrounds, and there are lots of kids who work to put themselves through college or at least get a fair bit of financial aid.

"She and four other researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Georgia and University of South Alabama looked at the results of psychological surveys taken by more than 16,000 college students across the country over more than 25 years."

It looks to me like it was just people in college.

From my own experience, I'd say that even working through and using financial aid, just coming from a background with expectations of college is a different world.

You always bring up the most interesting things.

In my opinion, I don't think it is the push for higher self-esteem that has turned young people to self-centered human beings. Feeling strong and capable is not what causes people to be selfish, in fact I think a lack of it of those feelings is more to blame. When we don't feel good about ourselves as people we obsess about the little things, our material posessions and our appearances, because those are things we feel we can control.

Why do I think young people are more self-centered than ever before? I think the permissive parenting, celebrity worship, and materialisim in today's world is more to blame. Kids today have more expect more, and don't work as hard to get it. We also live in a world where technology allows us to have everything our own way (there's a reason why they call it the "i" pod instead of the "we" pod) and allows us to shut out anyobdy who has different needs or a different point of view. Kids don't have to learn how they get along now that they have their own cell phone, ipod, computers and video games, they can just shut others out.

I also think the MySpace and Live Journal culture where everyone blogs about their personal lives and posts pictures and movies gives people an inflated sense of importance, as if we are all interesting enough to have our lives followed by the web. When we think we have an audience following our every move we are going to put more effort into mangaing our online and Rl personas. For chrissakes, Time Magazine made ther person of the year last year YOU as in me, and YOU and EVERYBODY. Kids are already painfully self aware in the first place, send them that kind of message and DUH...they are gonna obsess about themselves!

In schools I see a lot of kids with terrible social skills who can't even make conversation, let alone initiate a friendship. I don't think being the I generation is making kids truly feel any better on themselves, self-centeredness is just a new face on the same old teen awkwardness and angst.

This makes me feel very good about the parenting/lifestyle choices we have made (no tv, limited toys (in fact, every day I feel my kids need fewer toys), limited number of activities, limited computer time, but lots of time to play, read, notice what is going on in the world, interact with family and friends, create things).

I don't know what the deal with "permissive parenting" is. Personally, I have limits. I think we all do. I see kids doing things that I would not allow my kids to do to me because it is just downright disrespectful of another human being and it makes my skin crawl. I don't know how people can let their own kids treat them that way (they allow hitting, scratching, being climbed all over, etc). I'm not a total dictator, but our kids know there are limits and they know which ones are worth testing and which ones aren't:)

I also think that everyone having an Ipod and a cell-phone puts people in these incredible little bubbles. One day I saw a teenager walking down the street with his Ipod in one ear and his cell phone up to his other ear. It just struck me that he was probably oblivious to his surroundings (not that they were great surroundings to take in, but still...). I was just recently remarking to someone that I don't like to watch tv because I prefer to have natural experiences.

Anyhow, sorry. Didn't mean to veer completely off the subject:P It's a subject that dh and I talk about from time to time and I think it's so interesting because dh had a computer when he was like 12 (which would have been 1983) and has used computers and been "online" since 1985 and yet he prefers to read on his commute to work and we have very little in the way of popular technology, if you will. We don't even have a portable cd player:)

> One day I saw a teenager walking down the street with his Ipod in one ear and his cell phone up to his other ear.

To be fair, when my phone rings while I'm listening to my iPod, I take the earbud out of one ear but leave it in the other with the sound paused. Could he have been doing that, or did you actually hear the pod playing music? (If so, that is so weird! I don't know how people can multitask auditory information that way. I can listen and drive, or listen and walk and explore, but I can't listen to more than one thing at once.)

I've been thinking about this lately, and theorizing that the iPod may be as much a symptom of the bubble-culture as a cause. I listen to audiobooks on my iPod wherever I go now -- and it means I don't feel as lonely and bored as I used to when I'm out and about, because it's not like anybody was talking to me before. It feels a lot like the way when I was a shy little kid I used to carry a book everywhere and read it in snatches before class, during lunch, during recess... but even though I suspect the books require even more concentration that music would, I still smile at people as I walk by, and pay attention to what's going on; and of course I always pause it whenever I'm interacting with someone, or might interact with someone.

Recently, I was zoning out on the T listening to an audiobook as usual, when a woman ran on and then sat down wheezing and gasping and fishing in her purse for an inhaler. I paused my book and asked her if she was okay, if she needed any help. She said she was fine, but she thanked me several times, and then thanked me again before she got off -- it was the first time, she said, that anybody had ever asked her if she was all right when she had an athsma attack in public. But I'm not trying to pass this off as a virtuous story by any means -- all I did was be polite!

iPods may be a symbol of the bubble-mentality, and reinforce it, but they're not the cause of it and they don't have to prevent interactions between strangers or paying attention to your surroundings. Like cell phones, they just make it easier to be oblivious if that's what you want to do. But mostly I think our problem is this mind-your-own-business culture -- I was once sick as a dog on the T, green, sweating, holding a bag in front of me, hunched over, obviously in trouble; and nobody said a thing, nobody asked if I was okay -- even though, like the athsmatic woman, I'm small and female and professional-looking and obviously not a threat to anyone. I can't explain it.

Once when I was on an elevator, as I was putting away my iPod, I got a distinct cold vibe of disapproval from the woman next to me -- I forget her exact words, but they were something along the lines of "you young people all have those things now, I see everyone walking around them them..." I ignored the vibe and said cheerfully that yeah, it was a really good book I was listening to and I was looking forward to hearing the rest of it. Her demeanor changed instantly into one of approval -- oh, I wasn't listening to that terrible music the kidz all rave about today, I was a sophisticated adult listening to books, which she thought was just great. I wonder what she would have thought if I'd said I was in a really good part of Beethoven's Ninth and looked forward to hearing the rest of it? Would that have been okay, too? /muse

Self-Esteem in High Places

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Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average

Re: Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average

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tangential ramble (a little off topic)