Child experts

The latest fad among child experts centers around the idea of praise. The argument is that excessive praise cheapens the effort and that sounds reasonable because of the word excessive. I agree if praise is offered for just showing up that can be detrimental and lead to the unrealistic idea that life is that way. Dale Carnegie said, “Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise”.

What is being ignored in this discussion is the difference between children. Some profit more than others from praise. I, for one, have always been encouraged by praise and have often told people, tell me how good I am and I will get better. This worked for me because I rarely got praise for something that was not a significant achievement. I grew up in an era when praise was not handed out indiscriminately and we had winners who were recognized as winners. By definition we had many more who were not winners but we did not consider them losers. I believe all the students who go out for the team are winners. All those who compete for class president are winners.
This whole idea had its beginnings in the 60’s when self-esteem was the key word. I recall the example of the teacher who asks Johnny, how much is two plus two and he says five and the teacher responds by saying, that’s almost right Johnny. It was at that time that passing an unprepared student was deemed better than holding him back. This led to what is called grade inflation where you get a “C” if you just show up every day and “A’s” which were a rarity in my time are now routine.
The end result is that we are losing our competitiveness, our desire to be the best has been replaced with fairness. Some feel that having winners and losers is not fair. The word, “fair” has become politicized and used to attack the free market system. What could be more fair than every family having the same income. I have a friend in my chat room from Croatia and she told me that salary differences between professionals and non-professionals are more narrow than in the USA. I have known for many years that life is not fair and the word has gained considerable popularity in recent years and this concerns me as the question is who will decide what is fair if not the market. We need some changes but will allowing the government to set wages be the answer we choose? We shall see.