Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Blog Assignment - Week 6

Part 1:
Week 6 already?!  Only 8 assignments to go after this!

The topic of Chapter 6 is The Self, which includes a variety of topics including self-concept, self-esteem, social comparison, etc.

If you haven't caught on by now, I often try to present you with multiple views on a subject to evaluate and form your own opinion regarding the topic.  This week, you'll read about the positives related to self-esteem and how to promote self-esteem.  However, for this week's assignment, I want you to take a look at the down side of promoting self-esteem.  

Please complete the following:
  • What is the concept of self-esteem?
  • Watch this video on YouTube.
  • Thoroughly summarize the content of the video.  Be sure to include the pitfalls of promoting self-esteem.
  • Provide your reaction to the video.  What really stuck out to you?
  • At the end of your post, please create a list of key terms/concepts that you used from the textbook in your response (can be from this chapter or previous chapters).  This will help encourage you to really use course concepts in your writing by making it more visible to you.
On a side note, I found this relevant to previous discussion in class about social media use.  This research was done at my alma mater and examines the effect of texting during class (as many of you admitted to doing on the blog and I see it during class).  It is just a short brief, but is interesting nonetheless.  Read it here.

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Part 2:
As in the previous weeks, please respond to any 2 existing blog posts (not including this one or posts that you have responded to previously) to get credit for you "blog comments."  Each post has its own instructions to follow in regard to commenting. Note: Replying to other students' comments on blog posts does not count toward your grade, although I encourage you to engage in conversation with your colleagues.

74 comments:

  1. The concept of self- esteem is a persons overall judgment of his or herself as well as an attitude toward his or herself. If a person has high self-esteem the person is happy and satisfied about themselves. But if a person has low self-esteem the person is unhappy and they don't feel good about themselves.

    The video on YouTube talks about how much people are promoting self-esteem these days. In the video, kids were shown taking self-esteem classes at school. The kids in the video were appraised for everything that they did. The important thing in this video was to make sure that the kids had high self-esteem. In the video, even if you didn't win the soccer match you would still get a trophy, showing that you tried your best. The video says that if you grow up with high self-esteem then you will most likely be successful in life. The parents on the video were disagreeing with this because they didn't see that their kids were learning as much as they could in school, even if they were building higher self-esteems. The pitfalls of promoting self-esteem is that people need to receive honest feedback. The kids in the video were not getting honest feedback because they were getting rewarded for everything that they did. In order to be successful in life, people need to be given honest feedback.

    I was shocked when I was watching this video. I think that it is good that these schools are promoting self-esteem but I also think that kids need to hear the honest feedback so that they can learn from their mistakes. The thing that stuck out to me the most is that the kids playing soccer in the video were rewarded trophies even if they didn't win. In the real world that is not how it works and I think the kids just need to learn how to face those facts.

    Key Terms/ Concepts:
    Self-esteem
    Attitudes
    Reinforcers
    Self-Efficacy
    Confidence

    ReplyDelete
  2. Self-esteem can be described as how you see yourself. If a person has a great self-esteem, then they are satisfied with themselves. If a person has a lower self-esteem then they don’t feel as good about themselves.
    The video discussed how children are being over praised now-a-days. Students are spending less time on actual school work and more time building up their egos. This is hurting students in the long run. It seems as though children are beginning to think that they are better than everyone because of it. Students are even attending self-esteem classes. This is almost hurting kids because they are not being exposed to the real world. They aren’t receiving any criticism rather it be positive or negative. In the video the children who played on a soccer team didn’t even need to worry about winning or losing because they didn’t appoint winners. Although competition isn’t always healthy, it is needed to be successful.
    I was in awe while watching that. When I was in elementary school, we actually learned. It seems like children spend so much time talking about how special they are and hardly any time on real school. I was also shocked by the outcome of the video. The video proved how crazy the concept of over praising is. If a child always thinks they are perfect and can make no errors; a child is going to be very confused when it’s time for them to apply for school and they get denied!
    Some key terms that we’ve learned are reinforces, self-esteem, confidence, attitude, stress, self-efficacy, stressors, and overconfidence

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  3. Self-esteem refers to one’s personal assessment of how confident they are in themselves and their abilities. Self-esteem can also relate to how content they are with themselves. People who have higher self-awareness tend to have clearer self-concepts, which in turn creates higher self-esteem.

    The video clip provided shows how schools are promoting self-acceptance at a young age. The idea was that since successful people seem to have high self-esteem then by teaching self-esteem they will create successful people. School districts have been putting so much effort into teaching self-esteem that they have been slacking on teaching the actual school discipline. They have been holding on to this theory for over twenty years even though there has been no proof to support this idea. Concerned parents are worried that their children are going to school and not actually learning what they should be. Students have been taking self-esteem classes and attending assemblies to improve the way they perceive themselves. Many schools have even eliminated honor rolls to avoid making kids feel inferior to others. There is no proof that minimizing competition helps the children, but it could in fact be hurting them. The self-esteem courses actually hurt their performance because by rewarding kids even when they fail it discourages them from working hard. It makes children unable to handle setbacks. If they are given honest feedback they will want to work harder. People who have an inflated self-image tend to be the ones who act out in an aggressive manner because they feel superior. It is better to acknowledge effort rather than telling them they are smart.

    This video was actually very interesting. When it started I initially thought it was going to promote self-esteem courses, but the arguments they made against such classes seemed accurate. When they talked about all children receiving trophies despite their efforts and not keeping score at sporting events it blew my mind. It is great that they are including everyone, but how will they be able to set goals when they don’t have to do anything to get rewarded? School is supposed to prepare students for real life and by teaching them that everything they do is spectacular will only break them down when they realize life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows.

    Key Terms:
    Confident
    Self-Concept
    Perceive
    Self-Image

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  4. The concept of self-esteem is the way that you judge yourself and your overall attitude toward yourself. Self-esteem can describe how you portray yourself in society and what kind of personality that you have. For example, someone can have high self-esteem which means they are an extrovert who is usually very happy. A low self-esteem would result in a more quiet person who is usually unhappy with themselves.

    This video was about the positive and negative effects of promoting self-esteem in the school and extra-curricular activities. By promoting self-esteem in the classroom, kids tend to feel better about themselves and have shown to be happier. Children who attended self-esteem classes each day said that they were happier and more positive because of what they learned in that class. Also, in school-related extracurricular activities, high self-esteem has been promoted through the use of saying that no one is a loser such as in a soccer tournament. Everyone gets trophies and no score is recorded so that everyone is equal.
    Although high self-esteem has been shown to be positive, it can also cause problems such as over confidence and violence. Because some people have a super high self-esteem, they believe that they are right and get mad when they are challenged. For example, when told that they had to compete with how fast they pushed a button with an opponent, the people who had scored with very high self-esteem on a test were more aggressive. The school shootings have also been linked to high self-esteems.
    Another point of self-esteem is that in order to truly feel good about yourself, honest feedback is needed. When praised for doing well on something that is very easy, the result wasn't as high for a high self-esteem as it was for when they were praised for doing well on something that was more difficult. Also, if you don't give honest feedback, how are people supposed to improve in the fields that they are not as strong in? In order to excel, honesty is key. Saying that you did well in everything doesn't help nor hurt the person but it is better to know what needs to be fixed rather than taking the easy road and saying that you did well in everything.

    The point that really stuck out to me in the video was that a very high self-esteem can result in violence. It did not occur to me that this could be a result of something that is normally viewed as positive. I always thought that it was good to have a high self-esteem. It makes sense that this could cause the person to have a high ego and think that they are invincible and better than those around them.

    A few of the key terms or concepts that we have learned about are self-esteem, attitude, confidence, and stress.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Self-esteem is someone's view on their own self worth. A high sense of self-esteem is directly related to confidence in oneself. Higher confidence can mean a happier person as well.

    The YouTube video shows how important self-esteem is nowadays. This increased focus on self-esteem may be hurting student's attention spent on homework and more of a focus on their self image. This focus on self-esteem could be harming children more than doing them good. The self-esteem classes they attend may be improving how these children view themselves. These classes, however, may be counteractive. The honor roll system has been taken from many schools in attempt to avoid student's inferior feelings towards one another. Many of the students enjoy the whole everybody wins and is equal way of teaching, though. "Mistakes are beautiful opportunities to learn," is what one boy said was his favorite poster hanging in his classroom. Being told they're brilliant can make children more hesitant. Also, if you aren't told what your weaknesses are, how can you improve on them. Having an increased self-image can be a negative thing. Aggressive behaviors seem to come from those with a self-image that is exaggerated. Promoting a false sense of self-esteem can be very dangerous according to new research.

    My reaction to the video was shocking. I wouldn't have ever thought of these negative sides of praising children and boosting self-esteem had they not been presented in the video. The negative effects all make sense, though. Taking away the honor roll in schools can help children at a young age, but as they grow and have this inflated sense of self-esteem, it can be as harming as the slightly lower sense of self-esteem would have been.

    Key words:
    self-esteem
    confidence
    self-image

    ReplyDelete
  6. The concept of self esteem deals with your over all view about yourself. Someone's self esteem could be very low or very high. Self esteem cause also come from how someone judges themselves depending on the standards they give themselves. Everyone has a different opinion about the importance of self esteem. Personally, I find having a high self esteem very important. There are many sides of self esteem.

    The You-Tube video explained how self-esteem is being taught in school. I grew up in the generation where 'everyone is a winner', which is also explained in this video. There are specific lessons taught in school and listen to self-esteem rituals. It also explained how there are no winners with this and everyone is overly equal. Although people did this, there was no general proof that it worked. Instead, it may hurt the children.

    I do believe everyone is special in their own way, but teaching children there is no such thing as mistakes and theres essentially no room for improvement and they are perfect as they are is not right. In sports there needs to be a winner to give people something to strive for. If there is not a winner the hard work of the winners is not recognized. Personal self-esteem that deals with confidence is important, but people should know there is always room for improvement and no one is perfect. I believe the video showed a good side of self-esteem.


    Self-Esteem
    Attitude
    Self-Image

    ReplyDelete
  7. Self-esteem is a concept of how a person sees himself, including judgments and attitudes towards himself. Someone with high self-esteem is satisfied with how he views himself, where a person with low self-esteem doesn't have the same positive feelings. Self-awareness also ties in with self-concepts, correlated again with high self-awareness leading to higher self-esteem and vice versa.

    The video clip discussed how schools are trying to promote self-acceptance and positive self-esteem at a young age, believing that this will create success for these children in the future. This works in both positive and negative ways. The video discusses positive concepts, such as when students feel better about their school performance, they in turn feel better about themselves and are happier. Similarly, children who participated in school-related extracurricular activities where high self-esteem was promoted, children were also happier. Also saying that there are no losers made everyone feel better about themselves.

    However, although self-esteem has shown to be positive, problems occur when a child's self-esteem is too high. Overconfidence or cockiness can lead to violence, according to the video. Overconfidence can cause children to become cocky and not want to be challenged, thus getting mad and potentially becoming violent when it happens. Also, there is no concept of winning and losing, so sore losers do not react well. It also increased aggression in some cases.

    What really stuck out to me was the fact that too high of self-esteem can lead to violence. I guess I always associated the violent kids in school to be the ones with low self-esteem or the ones seeking for attention. It's important to find the balance of promoting good self-esteem while still having boundaries of it not being too high.

    Key Terms: Self-Esteem, Self-Image, confidence

    ReplyDelete
  8. Self-esteem is a person’s sense of worth; it’s how we feel about ourselves. The concept of self-esteem can be negative or positive, it is up to he individual to decide how they feel and think. In this video, a news anchor dives into the controversy of teaching self-esteem to children, in and out of the classroom. Young children have self-esteem classes in school where they are told that they are special, unique, and smart. They sing songs and have opportunities to tell others why they are proud to be themselves. Instead of focusing on actual learning and handling failure, kids are told they are smart and special. School systems are not adequately evaluating or teaching.

    Out of the classroom, kids are taught high self-esteem as well. Soccer games are not scored anymore and everyone wins a trophy. This “everyone is a winner” behavior may actually cause more harm than thought. Studies show that kids who are told that they are smart are less willing to tackle challenges. Further studies indicated that people with high self-esteem are more aggressive and violent. Promoting self-esteem is damaging the school system because kids are not given the chance to learn from their mistakes. Also, this teaches kids to be afraid of failure. Promoting self-esteem is a slippery slope with many hidden dangers.

    The video was a little dated, but still held relevant information. I agree that self-worth is important, but so is education. Too much praise is a bad thing and can lead to serious self-ego problems. I think it’s ridiculous that soccer games are not scored and everyone gets a trophy. It seems that hard work is not valued anymore because everyone is smart and special. The scene of the goalie was interviewed really stuck out to me also. He said that mistakes were okay to make because they’re good for learning. As he was playing, he was clearly upset at his performance and beaten up about it. He claimed that the self-esteem classes were helping, but I did not get that impression.

    Learning from mistakes and overcoming obstacles is how kids should build their confidence, not being told they are smart. Stress and failure are key components to a child learning about themselves and the world around them. Working hard and achieving good grades will be a positive reinforcement that will help with their self-image and attitude.

    Self-esteem
    Confidence
    Reinforcement
    Stress
    Self-image
    Attitude

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    Replies
    1. Yes, definitely dated (I think 1999), but the concept and its implications are still important (and interesting)!

      Delete
  9. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself, and how confident you are. Some people have good self-esteem and others do not. People’s comments can have large effect on someone’s self-esteem both positive and negative.

    The video talked about the good and bad benefits of self-esteem promotion. Some schools are focusing more on self-esteem then learning. The video talked about how some people saw this as good and some saw it as bad. The kids said they liked it, but the parents said that they felt that their children weren’t learning. One of the down falls that is attributed to self-esteem promotion is that the children felt that they didn’t have to try, and that they were satisfied if they were told they were smart even when they failed a test. The studies have no proof that promoting self-esteem creates successful people like they had hypothesized. Bob Moab is a guy who goes around talking to schools and kids about self-esteem. He is a firm believer that promoting self-esteem is the best thing. The children that took self-esteem classes also said they really enjoyed it, because they liked the feeling of being special and individualized. The video also talked about how schools don’t want to offend anyone so they did away with D’s and F’s, and honor roles. They also made it easier to get good grades. Another thing teams and schools are doing is that everyone gets a trophy even the losing team. The coaches don’t think this is right. One coach even referred to it as taking away life lessons. Psychologists even said that the self-esteem promotion hurts kids. When kids are told they are great and they don’t need to change they don’t try, or don’t want to do anything they are uncomfortable with. Kids that were praised for trying hard, but were told they didn’t do well wanted to try even harder the next time. The video talked about the self-esteem of school shooters. It could go both ways, some say they have low self-esteem and that’s why the do it. Others say their self-esteem is too high and they have a false image of themselves. They also said that people with too high self-esteem were found to be more violent than people with lower self-esteem.

    I found this video to be really interesting. When I think of self-esteem issues I don’t really think about it being too high. I do think that children need to be praised and know they are worth something, but I think it is very important for children to be pushed to learn and try to succeed. I also agree with the part of the video that said too much self-esteem is a bad thing. Too much self-esteem can give someone a false image of themselves and lead them to think they are more superior or have more power over something. I think there is a balance of self-esteem. You need it to be confident in yourself, but too much makes you feel like you don’t need to try. The part that stuck with me was the experiment where the kids did a test and the ones that were told you are smart did not want to challenge themselves with a harder test, but he kids that where told you tried hard where eager to do well on the harder test.
    Key concepts and words: self-esteem, confidence, self-image

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  10. The assigned video explains how schools offer courses to students that are in hopes of improving self-esteem. These classes or seminars let students feel special in their own way and improve confidence. During sporting events all of the participants get a trophy because they are treated equally. When hearing what the students say about the trophies, they enjoy receiving a trophy, even if they lost. Some people disagree with the use of no score keeping during sporting events games. The coach explains how life isn't about everyone being equal. Now there is evidence showing that appraisal to students could harm them in the end. If a child is receiving appraisal all of the time, it could lead to setbacks when learning new material. Confidence and improvement comes from hard work and feedback from others. By affirming a student their future ability can help the student later believe in their potential for the future. Self-esteem is important for both the parent and student to recognize, whether they are receiving appraisal at everything or not.

    I found it interesting that sporting events were giving trophies to all participants. It is great that they are all being recognized by their hard work, but what about the ones who didn’t contribute to the teamwork. A teammate could have put in much less work compared to a captain, yet they are both receiving the same gratitude. This could increase or decrease a student’s self-efficacy. A student’s self-concept could decrease as well because they will not feel unique in their own ways. Students will not be able to grow if they are receiving appraisal and complements at everything they do, whether it is sports, schooling, or a hobby. Since the American culture is focused upon individualization, then implementing equality could cause stress to students or parents. It would just be a different approach to life. Nothing says that either way is right or wrong, it goes along with what we are used to.

    Key Terms: Confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-concept, stress

    ReplyDelete
  11. This video started out by discussing the fact that there have been recent movements to try to boost self esteem. Many schools are starting to phase out competitions and not rewarding low grades because it may hurt somebody’s feelings. As a matter of fact, many schools are holding classes that are all based around self-esteem. In youth sports today, it is typical to hear the phrase that everyone is a winner. People are no longer keeping score and everyone is receiving a trophy at the end of the game. If self esteem is supposed to be what matters to be successful, then why are test scores across the country falling? However, when failures come around many people do not have good coping mechanisms. Because many people do not have good coping mechanisms, it is likely that they will experience higher levels of acute and chronic stress. They will become angry and use unhealthy techniques to deal with anger (i.e. displacement). Before failures occur many people in self esteem classes will have a high level of optimism. However, after failure they will become more neurotic in their behaviors.

    My reaction to the video is surprised. This is a unique view on self-esteem. However, it does make sense. People are not driven to be extremely successful anymore because they are always told they are doing a good job. So there is simply a lack of desire to succeed. This would make sense about why national test scores are decreasing and even youth sporting events are not rewarding places. I remember when I went to elementary school we had track and field day. People would receive different colored ribbons based on the places they received. There would be so much joy in each ribbon you won. However, they no longer have this event because children that did not receive a ribbon felt bad. I believe that some competition is a good thing and can make people only try harder. I was surprised by the study that linked people with high self-esteem to experiencing more anger when criticized. Also, I was surprised that inmates typically have higher self-esteem than undergraduates. The link between those with high self-esteem and possible crime was shocking.

    Self-esteem
    Coping mechanisms
    Acute stressor
    Chronic stressor
    Displacement
    Optimism
    Neuroticism

    ReplyDelete
  12. The concept of self-esteem is the overall assessment of one's worth as a person. Self-esteem is basically how one feels about themselves. There are people in this world who have a high self-esteem and at the same time there are people who don't and don't give themselves any credit.

    In the video they talked about how school make it a point to teach kids to have high self-esteems.And by teaching these kids to have a high self-esteem, it will help make them more successful in the future, which could have both positives and negatives. They talked about how in soccer everyone got a trophy that was the same color, so nobody would feel left out. One little boy said he liked it that everyone got trophies, he also quoted a poster from a self-esteem class that said "mistakes are beautiful opportunities to learn." Out of all the kids they talked to in the video said that they like the self-esteem classes .

    I thought that the video was interesting. I get that they are trying to make everyone feel better about themselves which is very important for younger kids to learn, but I also feel that they need to get honest answers. And maybe if they give everyone trophies for all the great effort they gave maybe they should give the winners a bigger trophy or one that is a different color. I was also shocked when they talked about people who have a higher self-esteem are more likely to be more violent. You always think that it is the kids who have a low self-esteem are like that and are violent because they are mad at something or don't fit in.

    Key Terms: Self-esteem, self-efficacy, confidence, self- image

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  13. The concept of self-esteem is how a person thinks and feels about themselves. It is how much they think they are worth or aren't worth. In class we talked about different personality traits. A person with a narcissism personality would have a high self-esteem. A person's behavior and how they adjust to a situation will depend upon their self-esteem.

    The YouTube video was about how schools are teaching the self-esteem model. They are teaching children that we are heroes, to give compliments, and make people feel special. The schools believe that if they teach self-esteem that they will get more successful people. However, the video describes that this is not the case and that no one has been able to prove it. Now in sporting events, they are avoiding competition, no score is being kept, and everyone gets an award. Evidence is showing that this policy may actually be hurting the children. Some of the pitfalls mentioned in the video are that it hurts performance, the kids can't handle the setbacks, kids need honest feedback, and excellence comes from effort. The model can be dangerous. Violence may be a result of higher self-esteem and the people with higher self-esteems are more aggressive. There was a test done that concluded that prisoners feel better about themselves and have higher self-esteems than college students. There is no proof that this model is helping and there is evidence that suggests that it is actually hurting the children. School are not listening to the evidence and are continuing to teach this self-esteem model. The video also suggests that praising the children's effort is more beneficial to the children. I think that this model would also increase a person's self efficacy and decrease their stress levels.

    I really liked this video. I didn't think that teaching self-esteem could actually be hurting the children. However looking at the evidence in this video, it does make sense to me. I think that there needs to be a good balance of teaching self-esteem but also praising students for their effort. This will be the most beneficial way. Something that really stuck out to me was that schools are actually teaching students with the self-esteem model and that people are now avioding competitions. I did not know this was happening. It is all very interesting to me.

    Keywords: Stress, Self-Efficacy, Narcissism, Self-Esteem, Behavior, Adjustment, Personality Trait

    ReplyDelete
  14. The concept of self-esteem is how someone views himself/herself and his/her self-worth. Someone who has high self-efficacy and believes strongly in his/her ability to achieve whatever he/she puts her mind to is likely to have high self-esteem. Finally, if an individual tends to maintain high self-enhancement, he/she is likely to also have high self-esteem because he/she is able to find the positives in himself/herself.

    This video discusses how some schools and sports teams are turning away from competition and instead to promoting high self-esteem. To promote self-esteem sports teams are eliminating winners and awarding everyone who participates in a game or tournament a trophy no matter what place they finished in. Schools are starting to promote self-esteem by taking away education time to focus on teaching self-esteem through songs and outside speakers. An interesting finding from this video was that it was not people with low self-esteem who had the highest tendency to become violent, but instead people with inflated self-esteem or narcissistic personalities. Some of the pitfall of teaching self-esteem is that if children are always rewarded, they lose the ambition to work hard. Another pitfall is that if someone has his/her self-esteem inflated he/she is likely to become more violet then people who do not undergo self-esteem training.

    My reaction to the video is that I do not believe in inflating children's self-esteem. While I do not believe it is right to put children down, there is nothing wrong with keeping score or awarding honor role. If children who do not win or make the honor role become upset then they can be encouraged to work harder and maybe they too could be on the next honor role or winner. Also if everybody receives a trophy, the trophy loses meaning. The trophy no longer stands for the hard work you put in, but instead becomes just a memento of the experience. I believe the thing that stuck out to me most was that many of the prisoners who participated in the study had higher self-esteems than the college students who partook.

    Keywords: Self-Efficacy, Narcissistic, Self-esteem, Self-enhancement

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  15. Self esteem is the overall sense of worth a person has. It can also be how confident a person might be in themselves when doing certain tasks or just in life in general. Too much self esteem can lead to narcissism which is more of being cocky rather than confident. The video talked about different ways they promote self esteem in schools for younger kids. They sing songs, poems, write about themselves, and they are praised for every single thing they do, whether it is good or bad. The schools believe that promoting self esteem is more important than actually learning. They think this because they believe if a child is confident in themselves, they can do anything. My reaction to this video is I was kind of surprised. I don't think teaching kids self esteem can hurt them but I think schools need to teach an equal amount of having high self esteem but also working and putting in the effort to be praised. I also think it's good to praise younger kids for things they do but I still think they should also be praised for their effort when doing things and having good behavior.

    Keywords: self-esteem, behavior, narcissism

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  16. Self-esteem is how one would perceive their worth as a person. I thought this video was quite interesting. In it, John Stossel discussed how more schools are teaching kids about self-esteem and working to make them feel "special". The reason behind their method is that they view successful people as having high self-esteem. So if they teach the students to have high self-esteem, they therefore are helping to shape future successful people. The school and other programs such as sports teams are avoiding things that might make the kids feel bad about themselves. This means no competitions, no trophies, no scores. Everyone is considered equal and considered to be a winner. There are many problems with this method. The kids may be feeling good about themselves but they are not necessarily learning. They are being praised for tasks that are considered "easy" which makes them not want to work as hard. The students struggle to handle setbacks and should be taught how to accept failure and put in the necessary effort to succeed. Teachers, parents, mentors, etc. need to acknowledge the effort of the child because it is better to tell the child that they worked hard than saying "you are so smart".
    I think that children should be encouraged to see their self-worth but do not need to be praised to the point that the school in the video was doing. I think it is important to build the child's self-esteem so that they may have confidence but it not good to coddle them. If they are perceived as fragile and receive nothing but praise, they may develop a narcissistic personality. By participating in competitions and receiving honest feedback, children learn and grow. It is through such processes and experiences that they develop their self-concept.
    Terms: Self-esteem, confidence, self-concept, narcissistic, and personality.

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  17. Self esteem is pretty much how you think of yourself. If you have high self esteem you are confident, believe in yourself, and tend to be more of an extravert. Low self esteem means you don't think very highly of yourself and you tend to be more of a neurotic. The YouTube video discusses how schools are promoting self esteem, sometimes more then actual learning. They sing songs, host speakers, have the kids talk about what makes them special and how great they are; all while taking away from them learning how to read and write. One of the speakers even said you should praise a child for reading even if they cant. Telling a child they are brilliant can actually make them less motivated. They identify with being smart when really they have a lot to learn. Why work if I'm already smart? Why work hard to get a trophy when everyone else gets one too? To much positive reinforcement leads to lack of trying.
    This video honestly got me fired up. I do think it is important for kids to have self esteem but I don't think it should be a main focus in school. You go to school to learn not to find out how special you are. Coddling them wont do anything for them in the long run. When they get to college and eventually out in the real world no one is going to care how special you think you are. You aren't preparing them for the real world. Something that really stuck out to me is when they talked about people with to much self esteem can actually be violent like school shooters. Maybe if they focused on teaching children to be kind and nice to one another instead of making them arrogant about themselves they could solve a lot more problems. It is important for children to have self confidence but leave it up to the parents, teach them what they are there to learn for.
    terms: extraversion, neuroticism, positive reinforcement, self- esteem, confidence

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  18. Self esteem is how an individual feels about their own abilities and worth. Another way to describe a person with good self esteem is confident. This video was very interesting. Having self esteem classes in school seems like a positive thing to have but when you look at the facts of research it doesn’t look so good. One of the down falls of having self esteem classes is that it takes time away from learning about reading and writing and other things. A teacher was told that it doesn’t matter if her kids can spell as long as they feel good about themselves. Other research presented in the video was about how violent people such as criminal have very high self esteem. Many people think that violent people have low self esteem and that is why they do violent things. This is not true. They conducted a study that had people rate themselves then write an essay. This essay was given to a fake person to read. When the participants with high self esteem found out that negative things were said about their essay, they were more likely to blast noise to the readers. This show ,that people with high self esteem are actually more violent than those who don’t. Another research experiment they did was with children. They gave 5th graders a very easy test. One group got praised and was told that they are really smart. The other group isn’t told that they are smart but they tried hard. Both groups were given a difficult test and they all do poorly on that test. The kids that were praised for working hard wanted to take more test home to try to do better. The kids that were told that they were smart did not want to face anymore challenges. This research shows that when students are praised for being smart, when they really didn’t try that hard, don’t want to try harder things and are more likely to give up. The video also talks about how in younger played sports everyone gets a trophy. This doesn’t necessarily make players not feel bad when they mess up. Also, the kids who perform at the bottom are not as happy about receiving a trophy as those kids who performed at the top. All in all, there is no research to show that these self esteem classes are making a difference, but this is not stopping school from having them.
    I was really surprised at how schools are promoting self esteem. At first I did not find this to be a negative thing. But after watching this video I think differently. I think that self esteem classes can cause children to become narcissistic, which is when you think highly of yourself and tend not to think of others. This is not a good thing. I was very surprised about the research where they had 5th graders take tests. I think that if teachers keep praising students who don’t try very hard that eventually students are going to think that doing the bare minimum will be a good thing. This can also to more stress in students lives. If a student thinks that the bare minimum is accepted, when challenges come along students will be stressed because they don’t know how to face challenges. This could lead to chronic stress, because they will grow up not being able to face challenges and challenges will be in a person’s life forever. Teachers need to learn how to tell their students the truth using positive reinforcement. This can be done by telling the student that they did work hard or tried but they need to work harder or try harder to receive a good grade. Adding the compliment to the situation will allow the students to feel better about the situation but at the same time have the drive to do better. All in all it is important to have good self esteem, but putting it before a student’s education is not constructive.
    Key terms: narcissistic, stress, chronic stress, positive reinforcement, self esteem.

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  19. The concept of self-esteem is how one values themselves in everyday life. Self-esteem can either give someone confidence or the person will lack confidence depending on how much self-esteem they have. The video on Youtube spoke about how school systems are spending millions of dollars each year to help provide children with self-esteem. They beliefs are that rich and wealthy people have high self-esteems so if they can teach children to have high self-esteem than they will be well off in the future. However, some of the parents are worried about their children not getting the proper education and having the schools worry about their self-esteem more. The school systems believe that it is better for kids to all be praised that way no one is left out and they all feel good. They used an example at a soccer game. All the kids got a trophy at the end of the game. Clearly there can only be one team that wins the game but their logic is to praise kids to help boost their self-esteems. The kids seem to like the idea and enjoy getting told they are doing well and receiving trophies. But the parents and coaches on the other hand know that this is not real life and know that their kids will not all be winners. The clip talked about how some schools are talking about taking honor roll out of schools so other kids do not feel left out. A Psychologist professor explained that through research on kids in the school system that all this praise is not motivating them to do more or better. The key for kids to move through school and other events is knowing that they tried their best and they put effort in their work. Kids need honest feedback in order to learn and move forward with their work. I would say that some of the pitfalls of promoting self-esteem is that it does not fully prepare kids for the future. If kids continue to get trophies and are told that they are doing great, than that may be all they expect throughout life. Also that by boosting their self-esteem they are not motivated to do harder work once they have failed something. This may greatly affect kids because work only gets harder and they are not prepared for negative responses or feedback. This boost of self-esteem can lead to over-confidence and eventually violence in kids.
    I was shocked when I clicked on the video and saw that kids were singing in class. I feel that so many Americans today lack the basic knowledge of our country’s history along with math, reading, and science. Many kids already have a hard time going to school and staying interested and now they aren’t learning subjects. They are providing kids with high self-esteem which is good, but how long will that last? I could not believe that all the kids were getting trophies and they were talking about taking out the honor roll. Those are programs that motive kids to do better. Not to just beat the other person or team but to make themselves a better person. Sports and other activities help build a structure for kids but if they are not even providing the basic guidelines that not everyone wins and you have to try harder next time, than they are not helping kids for their futures. This implies that no matter what the kids will do that they will always be rewarded but that is not the case in real life. I truly hope that more studies can be tested and prove that high self-esteem is good but not the way it is being taught by schools. Kids are meant to go to school to get an education.
    Key terms: Self-esteem, confidence, and over-confidence

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  20. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. If you have high self-esteem, you have confidence and you know who you are. If you have low self-esteem, you may experience lots of anxiety over what others think of you.

    The video talks about the movement of boosting children’s self-esteem and making them feel good about themselves. Studies show that people with higher self-esteem perform better. With this schools have started to teach self-esteem classes and now at competitions everyone gets a trophy and no scores are kept in order to make the children feel good. Doing this has actually caused some problems. Children have higher self-esteem, but now they expect to receive that trophy, they expect praise for every small thing that they do. Through this students aren’t learning like they used to, they don’t have the drive to ‘work hard’ because they already believe that they are the best and don’t think they have weaknesses. This self-esteem movement may be dangerous, an increase in violence isn’t from people with low self-esteem, and it’s because people don’t know how to handle criticism or failure. They’ve been taught that they are superior and when they’re knocked off their high horse they become aggressive because their bubble of self-love has been burst.

    I really enjoyed this video. I think it hits the ‘self-esteem issue’ head on. The part in the video where they say that the meat and potatoes of life have been taken away really stuck out to me. My parents have always told me that if I want something I have to work hard for it because nothing is ever handed to people. This has really helped me to achieve goals in my life, it has also taught me my weaknesses and where I need to improve in my life. The video also talked about weaknesses and how through the self-esteem classes students aren’t taught that they have weaknesses, only that mistakes are okay. This part stuck out to me because, yes, in a way mistakes are okay, but only if you learn and grow from them. Failing 3 tests in a row and having the thought of ‘oh it was just a mistake’ isn’t okay, but failing one test and then learning that you need to study harder for the next one is a positive way to learn from a mistake.
    Key terms: identification, regression, reinforcement, behavior, self-esteem

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  21. Self-esteem is what we think of ourselves. It’s whether we think we are worth a lot or a little and if it’s high, it means we have positive views of ourselves, whereas if it’s low, that means we see ourselves in a more negative light.
    The video talked about the fact that more and more schools are devoting valuable classroom time that used to be used to teach elementary school children basic skills like spelling and math is now being used to promote their self-esteem. They are taught songs that talk about how good and how smart each child is. Some of these kids are taking self-esteem classes every week. They talk about how good they feel taking these classes and seem to be really happy as they talk about their experience with these classes.
    Experts, however, have a very different take on the situation. While kids and teachers feel that promoting high self-esteem is a good thing, psychologists are saying that the self-esteem movement is actually hurting kids by promoting narcissism and even violence. While the fact that people with low and high self-esteem are capable of being violent is quickly established, the video went on to talk about research that showed people with very high self-esteem actually didn’t feel the need to try as hard at challenging tasks and also expressed violent tendencies in a game where they could zap the person who said they failed with loud noises. People with lower levels of self-esteem did not show this tendency.
    What stuck out to me was the study near the end of the video. In the part where the guy was playing the game where he could zap his criticizer with loud sounds, I was seeing catharsis in action. It was cool to be able to recognize that because it’s not something I would have noticed before taking this class. I also feel like the self-esteem movement is downplaying the importance of education and is fostering a generation of people who can’t develop or utilize individual skills. Part of what makes up society is people specializing and going into higher education in the fields they are good in. If someone can’t recognize their strong and weak points, how are they going to know what they need to work on?
    Key terms: catharsis, narcissism, self-esteem

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    1. Way to throw catharsis in there - good work!

      Delete
  22. The concept of self-esteem can have a variety of definitions. I see self-esteem as having confidence in you. Self-esteem can play a major rule in many aspects of one’s life. It can influence how you live your entire life. Self-efficacy can play a role in self-esteem as well, believing in your ability to complete a task and in yourself as a whole. The video starts by introducing the idea that confidence is important. Children these days are their own hero. They also work on complimenting each other and having new ways of improving self-esteem. People thought that successful people have high confidence, so they tried teaching confidence and practicing self-esteem improving behaviors. However, this is not always true. All of these extra classes and lectures are making the children feel better, but it isn’t necessarily doing what it is for. One major pitfall occurs when people overpraise their children for minor things they do not work hard to achieve harder tasks. They provided an experiment in which children were tested. This proved that children who are not praised for easy task work harder and want to learn more. If children do not hear their weaknesses they do not know what to improve on. Self-esteem should come from achieving not from being told you are doing well. Some experts are saying that the self-esteem can be dangerous. Violence could be the result of too high of self-esteem. People are more aggressive if they have a high opinion of themselves. Schools have been claiming that they are above average even when test scores are lowering.

    Schools are being too nurturing with these kids. Not giving out D’s or F’s and canceling honor roll so people’s feelings are not hurt is ridiculous. If you baby people for too long they are not going to last in the real world. Not having places for sports and giving everyone a trophy is also ridiculous. My final opinion is that people need to be pushed not coddled. They need to work hard for what they want to achieve not be told they are excellent doing the bare minimum.


    Confidence
    Self-efficacy
    Stress
    Optimism

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  23. Self-esteem is how one views their individual worth and abilities. This video shows self-esteem classes and explains how those classes affect the students. It seems like these classes would be beneficial but it can actually be detrimental. If the children are told “you’re smart” when they barely had to put any effort into it they are less likely to want to work hard. So this program might be making children confident but it could also be making them lazy. In my sister’s gymnastics meets every participant gets the same trophy. I always thought this was incredibly stupid. For those gymnasts that did little to prepare, they might feel like they don’t need to put much work into things to be successful since they already receive praise and positive reinforcement. And for those gymnasts who worked hard to get ready for this meet, they might feel like their accomplishments are belittled and may decide to not try as hard in the future. After these meets my sister never felt like she did a good job no matter what place she got. When everyone is equal there was nothing for her to work up to and no point in doing better. I don’t feel that this self-esteem approach is preparing children for the real world properly. College and jobs don’t work that way. Everyone is not equal. If the children are not taught self-efficacy and how to complete difficult tasks they are less likely to be successful than those children who are praised for their effort and hard work. The thing that stuck with me the most was the study at the prison that stated that many of the prisoners had surprisingly high self-esteem. For me this definitely showed that overconfidence was a negative thing especially when they have no work ethic or drive.
    Terms: self-esteem, positive reinforcement, self-efficacy, overconfidence

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    Replies
    1. Great job applying these concepts to experiences in your own life...that's the beauty of psychology!

      Delete
  24. In my opinion, self-esteem is how much confidence a person has in themselves. This could be physically or mentally. It is a collection of how they think other people view them.

    The video is about how making kids feel special even if it actually hurts them in the future. It has never been proven that boosting a kid’s self-confidence actually results in a higher self-assured adult. They did a study that resulted in that kids could not handle setbacks. These setbacks created stressors that they had never been introduced to before. They need honest feedback instead of overconfidence so that they are within reality. They also need to learn that excellence comes from effort. It has always been said that criminals are usually a result of a person having a low self-esteem. This was proven to be wrong in a study that was shown in the video, where people who had a high self-esteem were actually more violent than those who had low self-esteem. A pitfall with promoting self-esteem is that when someone would give them constructive critcism they were not sure how to handle it because they were so used to people telling them that everything they did was good. They often tend to lash out at the people that are trying to give them this criticism. It also caused the children to not want to give any more effort into what they were doing because it was already good enough. The children that were told that they tried actually wanted to learn more about the activity that they were asked to do.

    This video was very interesting to me. What stuck out most was when they were talking about criminals. It has always been thought that people that who commit crimes are a result of low self-esteem. In the video they stated that this is actually the exact opposite. All the supporting data that they used for this concept actually made a lot of sense.

    Key Terms/Concepts:
    Self-esteem
    Confidence
    Stressors
    Overconfidence

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  25. The concept of self esteem is a state of mind deciding upon how you view your accomplishments, talents, and the overall image of yourself. Your self esteem can be very high and that states that you have high confidence or your self esteem can be low when your confidence has been diminished. Self esteem can be built up in a variety of different ways and can be knocked down just as fast.
    This video demonstrates the ways that self esteem can be built up in schools by taking self esteem classes where the children put themselves first. The schools have established the self esteem move that allows all children to feel good about themselves. While they may be feeling good, the question is are they really learning anything about competition and the practice of hard work? Competition has been defined as a dirty word. Schools have now started to demolish the honor roll or not giving D's or F's on homework assignments. They want to instill in the minds of everyone that they are a winner. A psychologist stated that if we praise children for easy things, why would they want to do hard things. Children start to get caught up in the praise and they don't realize that excellence comes from effort. Another study showed that people with very high self esteems can ultimately lead to violent acts. While not everyone who has a high self esteem is going to become violent, a recent study showed that criminals have a higher self esteem than most college students. We should reward children for their hard work but do it in a way that is encouraging. You worked really hard is a better statement than your so smart.
    I found this video to be very interesting. I was never aware that there were classes for self esteem and that they were being taught today. I found it very intriguing that competition is becoming a bad thing. People don't want to compete in something and then be told that they didn't do a very good job. I think it is a bit extreme that schools are taking away Honor Roll and not giving D's or F's on homework assignments. I know that competition is hard in schools and that's really where you develop your self esteem but I think by taking away these aspects, the children aren't learning anything. I thought the fact about the criminals having a higher self esteem than college students was very eye opening. At the end of the video, they stated that instead of telling a student you are so smart to implement the compliment that you worked really hard was a better confidence booster. Especially working with little kids, I personally know I give them way to many compliments on easy tasks. I think that if I continue to build towards a career of working with children I will need to work on not complimenting them on every little accomplishment they have.
    Key Terms:
    Confidence
    Hard Work
    Praise
    Attitude
    Everyone's a Winner

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  26. Self esteem is how we judge ourselves for example, I am worthwhile, important, good, etc...Its the positive or negative views of ourselves and how we feel about those views; how self conscious a person is.

    The YouTube video talks about the positive and negative consequences of self esteem classes in schools. Schools and teachers have been encouraging students to think highly of themselves, that they are unique and special and everything they do is of value for the last twenty years or so. This sounds good in theory;however, the video showed that too much praise for insignificant accomplishments can lead to an overinflated sense of being. Its important that kids believe that they are worthwhile and have good self esteem otherwise the rate or depression and suicide will only increase. But, as the study with the simple and then complicated math problem showed, too much self esteem will only cause children to believe that they do not have to work hard to get ahead in life. Constant praise diminishes work ethic and hardiness to any sense of failure, kids who have experience honest constructive criticism are more prepared for real world dilemmas and are more able to adapt to real world situations, like having your first job.

    I agreed with the video in the sense that we probably are coddling our children a little too much. Trying to take competition out of sports games is just ridiculous.I've noticed especially with my peers that there's this sense of entitlement that comes with people my age. We tend to think we're entitled to everything, a good education, the best jobs, a good house, etc...right away with little to no effort on our part because we're special and, of course, everything's going to work out for us. However, it isn't a bad thing to teach kids to think highly of themselves and that they're worthwhile. I just think its gone too far now. We need to find a happy medium where kids know that having self esteem is a good thing, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to anything or that other people matter less than you do.

    Key Concepts

    Self Esteem
    Attitude
    Neuroticism
    Confidence
    Adjustment

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  27. Self-esteem refers to an individual’s personal views and thoughts about themselves. Self-esteem can have a profound impact on an individual’s life. For example, a person with high self-esteem will be confident allowing them to be comfortable pursuing new activities.

    This video discussed some of the potential negatives of excessively promoting positive self-esteem. The report focused mainly on school children. Many schools now promote participation and “warm fuzzies” over all else. Students are encouraged to have high self-esteem; to feel good about themselves. To promote this, schools do not grade or score students. The commentator voiced that, “competition has become a bad word.” The video detailed how children preferred the classes where they did not necessarily learn anything but were rewarded and ensured praise to foster high self-esteem.

    The video also presented several experiments that demonstrated how high self-esteem could lead to violent and aggressive tendencies. This may be in part due to the fact that individuals with high self-esteem are very confident that they will succeed. Presented with failure, the individual may be unsure of how to handle the situation. They may react with violence. Additionally, children did not want to rock the boat. When they are told they are smart, they do not want to attempt harder tests. The video suggested that children should be told they have tried hard. Stressing the importance of exerting effort is the most important, more important than promoting self-esteem.

    This video was extremely interesting to me. I completely agree that self-esteem and feel good is way to predominant in schools today. A single individual is not the best at everything. Failure is a large part of life. It happens and often. Being unable to cope with that sets children up for even additional failure. Although it may be comfortable and to some extent it may hurt the child, they have to experience failure. Not everyone can win a game. Competition occurs every day in life. Being prepared, understanding that sometimes one may fail, and understanding individual weaknesses is vital to thrive in our society.
    Key terms/concepts: Self-esteem, attitudes, confidence, self-image

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  28. Self esteem is an explanation of how we feel about ourselves. This could mean our “gifts and talents”, how well we do in school or our job, our appearance, or even our attitude. When a person lacks self esteem, it can be very detrimental to their physical and mental health. A high self-esteem can result in better work or it could cause a bad attitude when it comes to interacting with others. If a person’s self-esteem is high, they may feel they are better than others and negatively put down those around them.


    In the video, “Social Psychology, Feel Good about Failure,” it discussed if praising children all the time was a positive or negative thing to do. Also, if raising a child’s confidence in themselves made them successful or not. Some parents were interviewed and they said they were becoming worried, because yes their child had a good self-esteem or self image, but their reading and writing skills lacked greatly. The children lack, because the school systems have been putting more money into these other programs, such as speakers, than focusing on the actual learning environment. The speaker that was feature had a few very interesting way of thinking when it came to a child’s confidence. Even if a child could not read, he would say to tell them that they enjoy reading and are good at it, though they did not know how to read. He says that by increasing their confidence they will start to believe they are a good reader and this will help them learn. There are issues with praising a child too much. This can be them being so confident in their school work, they decide they do not want to pay attention in school or they do not have the want to learn anymore. Also, they did do a survey of men in prison and men on a college campus and the results showed that the men in prison had higher self-esteem rates than those on a college campus.

    I enjoyed this video very much, especially since, when I graduate in May, I am planning on working with children. I also have a strong belief in helping children realize their potential, but not just spoon feeding them compliments, which may or may not be true. It is an important skill for a child to learn how to cope with failure and know it is not necessarily a bad thing if they do not succeed. Especially as they grow older and there is not always a person or teacher to give you that confidence boost. Also, this could cause problems on how a child perceives the “real world.”

    Key Terms:
    Confidence
    Self esteem
    Self image
    Attitude
    Perceive

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  29. Self-esteem is a term used to describe how a person feels about themselves. Each person has a different self-esteem level in which they perceive and accomplish things differently. Self-esteem can also determine a persons personality and how they react with people around them. For example, a person with high self-esteem usually has a lot of friends and is very open with others and involved with different activities. On the other hand, a person with low self-esteem may be more closed off and keep to themselves.
    This video showed how self-esteem classes and the idea of building up each child's self-esteem may be doing more harm than good. This video described how school are focusing so much on building up self-esteem in students that they are beginning to lower their grading standards which can negatively impact students for the future. Although building confidence is important, it should not be the main focus of schools and sports according to the video. This video also states that children that are taking these classes with have more confidence in themselves which is not entirely true. Students are not being challenged in school due to the fear that their self-image may be negatively impacted. The video also shows that children are getting praised for the smallest effort not only in school, but also in athletics. So that a child does not feel bad about themselves, each child is given a trophy whether they win or lose so that their self-image is not damaged. Overall, this video only showed the negative impacts that this idea of self-esteem is creating. What really stuck out to me in this video is that children are actually being forced to take these self-esteem classes multiple times a week. I do agree with the video that this will cause more harm than good because if a student is being praised for doing the bare minimum that may be all they strive for.

    Key Terms:
    self-esteem
    confidence
    self-image

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    Replies
    1. We'll talk more about the positive aspects of self-esteem in class. The book tends to only discuss the positive aspects, so I wanted you to have the opportunity to see another side of the spectrum.

      Delete
  30. Self esteem is the way that an individual views him or herself as a person. Self esteem can be related to success. If one is successful then they might feel better about themselves than somebody who is unsuccessful. Each person views themselves differently and self esteem can be a complicated and stressful thing. The video talked about how important self esteem is for kids but that it could also be causing harm to them as well. The video showed multiple clips of a school setting in which kids are learning all about me myself and I. They are being drilled on the idea that everybody is good and everybody can do everything, almost like the thought that everybody is equal. The video discussed how different schools are now than how they used to be back in the day. Now a days there are not as many competitions because they do not want the losers to feel bad. They are taking away the honor roll in schools and some schools are not giving out D's or F's anymore. Another example was in sports. The video discussed a soccer tournament for young children around nine years old. At the end of the tournament, everybody got a trophy whether you won or you lost. During the games, they also did not keep score because they did not want the kids to feel bad. The argument being made during the video was that promoting self esteem as hard as they are now could be bad for the kids. They are not learning healthy competition and they are not learning to better themselves. The psychologist made a comment that really stuck out to me. She said "If kids are being told they are doing extremely well at the little things, then what will make them want to become better and try the hard things?" This really stuck out to me. It made a lot of sense because kids would probably become satisfied with being told they are always doing good and so they are content with where they are and might not try to excel in certain areas. Personally I think that promoting self esteem they way that they are now is bad. I think that self esteem should be something that you form about yourself, not what others are telling you to think about yourself. I do not see competition as a bad thing. I think that by nature we as people are competitive and that it's a part of life. Not everybody can win. I think the work ethic that we learn through competition helps us in life as well. I think that taking off the honor roll in schools and not being as hard on grades is terrible. I think that those who work hard and deserve recognition should be allowed to earn it, not get the same praise as the kid who never tries but get's told he is really good as well. Self esteem is a sensitive thing and when dealing with young kids you do have to be careful about the images that you put in their heads about what to think about themselves. Being optimistic about self esteem is sometimes not always better than being realistic.

    Key terms:
    Self Esteem
    Optimism
    Realistic
    psychology
    stress

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  31. I believe that self-esteem is describing a persons self worth and self-value. If a person is experiencing high self-esteem, that means that this person is thinking a lot of themselves versus a person with low self-esteem, in which a person is “down in the dirt” about themselves. Self-esteem can be affected by multiple different factors such as environment.
    The YouTube video discussed how schools and programs were focusing mainly on boosting self-esteem, rather than the students learning curriculum. One example that was given in the video was the kids that played soccer. All of them received trophies and no points were kept in the game. One coach said that it was taking all of the “meat and potato’s” out of life and the fact is that everyone is not equal. I found the example of students being given tests and praised for trying to do well on the test than actually doing well on the test. It was shown that students that are praised for doing well on an exam were less likely to want to do more work than students who were praised for trying. Self-esteem was deemed to be even dangerous in this video. When a person has high self-esteem and they are criticized, they are likely to lash out which is believed to be the cause of some school shootings. When students did a self survey and then wrote an essay and when they had high self-esteem they received bad grades on the essay, they would then have a race to see who could click the button faster and then have a chance to blast the other persons ear drum, it was noticed that they put the level to the highest setting when they made the noise. Finally, they determined that self-esteem was not going to make people shoot each other, but they determined that self-esteem classes were a waste of money.
    I felt this video was overall good. I feel I am in the middle of the tide as the guy at the end said. This is because I feel that boosting a child’s self-esteem is important, however, they need to know their weaknesses as well to improve themselves overall.
    Key concepts:
    Self-esteem
    Self-efficiency
    Self-image
    Attitude

    ReplyDelete
  32. Self esteem is the way one views themselves. Although self esteem depends on what you do in day to day life. Some people live in State self-esteem, their self esteem levels change on a daily basis. One day they are on top of the world and the next day they are in the dumps.
    In the video, they were teaching people to have self esteem. They are learning to be a person who is always in a Trait style of self-esteem. Teaching people that they come first instead of everyone else. The downfall to this is that the education system doesn't care if the child can read or write they just want to child to be able to have self-esteem. So who cares if Johnny can't read he has a high self-esteem. He will never be able to fill out a resume but he has self-esteem.
    I understand the concept of teaching kids to have self esteem but when the education system doesn't care if the child can read or write what good is self esteem? If they went hand in hand it would be great, but all they are doing is promoting self-esteem. What happens when this child becomes an adult and is not able to fill out a job application or be able read directions at work? We need to promote self esteem but in the same sense we also need to make sure that the child can read and write. Once those kids can read and write and promote self esteem the child will gain more from that. As a parent I would be very upset if they was pushing the whole self esteem classes over other classes. It is almost like they are trying to teach these kids to become narcissist.
    Key Terms:
    self-esteem
    narcissist
    Trait self esteem
    State self esteem

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    Replies
    1. Luckily for you, I think the big push of this movement is over, from my understanding!

      Delete
  33. Self-esteem is the way you feel about yourself, whether it is high or low, and can reflect upon your performances. It is the way you view yourself and if you’re satisfied with whom you are and what you do. People with a higher self-esteem tend to be more outgoing because they aren’t as afraid of what other’s think about them. A person with a lower self-esteem can be shyer and not have any confidence in themselves.

    Parents are concerned that the teacher’s concern to raise a student’s self-esteem is taking away from actually learning academic material. People are coddling kids by giving everyone a trophy no matter how well you do in a tournament. Some schools took away their honor roll because they thought that it would make kids feel bad and they won’t be motivated to improve. Praising children for doing easy things won’t make them want to try harder things with the possibility of failing. They did a study about how to tell a kid how well they did on a test and see what the reaction to it was. Some kids were told how brilliant and smart they are and others were told that they must have worked really hard. The students were then given a harder test and it showed that the students who were told that they were hard workers actually did better and showed that they wanted to work even harder. The ones that were told they were really smart were actually more down on them and were reluctant to face harder challenges. They get so caught up in being praised that they don’t try to do anything else but always remember being called a genius. It’s been said that kids in trouble have low self-esteem but now it’s being questioned that maybe it wasn’t low self-esteem, but an inflated view of themselves. Instead of praising a child, it is better to express that you noticed how much effort they put into things.

    I am all for helping give children a higher self-esteem so they can feel better about themselves and be more successful, but I don’t necessarily agree with all of the praising. Kids that do poorly on something shouldn’t be criticized, but they shouldn’t be told that they did an amazing job. Saying that they put in a lot of effort and it was noticed is a lot healthier for the child, because then they know what they need to improve on and they are more motivated to do so. Handing out the same trophy to everyone that participated in a soccer tournament probably isn’t the best idea. I understand what they’re trying to do but the team that actually won the tournament won’t feel like they won. They should be awarded a little differently especially if they earned it. I like the idea of giving something to each child, but maybe smaller ribbons or some other appreciation of effort could be awarded to the teams that didn’t do as well. By lying to a kid about how they actually did on a task just adds to their ego and they won’t be focused or try as hard on the next task. They were told they were a genius so they will act like they are one and put in minimal effort, knowing they will be praised for it.
    Key Terms:
    Self- Esteem, confidence, perceive, attitude, narcissism, behavior

    ReplyDelete
  34. Self-esteem is basically how you feel about yourself; everyone wants to feel good about themselves. Self-esteem can be stable but can also be affected by numerous things. Outside factors can diminish your thoughts about your self-worth; therefore, lowering your self-esteem.

    This video talks about how people are promoting self-esteem to kids. Taking classes, speakers, and singing about self-enhancement is becoming too much. They say that by teaching kids to think that they are great and wonderful, the kids will feel better about themselves. When some children were interviewed they stated that they liked the classes because it made them feel good. In the case of soccer, they are making everyone a ‘winner’ by giving them all trophies and not taking score. When they did the study about telling students that are ‘smart’ and some ‘you worked very hard on this’ is a great example of the downfalls of promoting self-esteem. It said that the kids who were told that they were smart did not want to keep doing tougher puzzles compared to the ones who were told that they worked really hard. Maybe promoting self-esteem isn’t such a good thing.

    I highly agree with that fact that promoting too much self-esteem is harmful for kids. Being told that you are smart and wonderful is good, but in the end it is not. When you get older, not everyone is going to be fair. You are going to be put down, told what to do, and much more. If people keep telling children they are great, it is going to be a rough experience when they find out that not everyone is going to tell you that. That is a part of life; kids need to learn that at a young age.

    Key Terms:
    Confidence
    Self-esteem
    Stress
    Self-image
    Behavior

    ReplyDelete
  35. Self-esteem is the concept of a person’s overall emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. The video “Feel Good about Failure” focuses on the self-esteem movement, which is based on the incorrect idea that since successful people seem to have a high self-esteem, in order to raise successful children, we have to teach them to have a high self-esteem. In the video, schools are paying money to raise everyone’s self esteem and in return are letting academics fall to the wayside. The video even goes on the explain how schools have banned doing anything that makes children feel bad about themselves, including competition , honor rolls, and giving trophies to everyone regardless of how they do. An interview with a researcher explains that children need to be told what their weaknesses are so that they can improve on it. Surprisingly, research suggests that violence is more prone in people who have an artificially high self esteem, basically making baseless self-esteem dangerous.

    What really stuck out to me in this video is the fact that promoting false self-esteem by praising people for literally every single thing they do, can ultimately harm those people in the long run. People who have a too high level of self esteem can become narcissists, in which people think that they deserve special treatment and can become aggressive .

    Terms used:
    Self-esteem
    Narcissism

    ReplyDelete
  36. Self-esteem is the term used to describe how a person views themselves. Some people feel that they are worthless which means that their self-esteem is very low. A person with high self-esteem is happy with themselves, and they have a high level of confidence.

    The video discusses how the promotion of self-esteem at a young is becoming more and more popular in schools. Supposedly, those who are successful in life have a very high self-esteem. People are looking at school as a way to help children become more successful when they grow up by promoting high self-esteem. Most people think that those who have a low self-esteem are more likely to stray off the path of good and become criminals; this, however is not the case. In a study done testing people’s self-esteem and how prone they are to violence they have found that the higher a person’s self-esteem, the more prone to violence they are. The researchers then went to a prison and gave inmates a self-esteem test, and the results showed that the majority of them had a high s. This is why some people are wondering if it is a good idea to be working on children’s self-esteem when they are young. Another thing that was brought up was taking competition and losing out of the equation for children. Is it better for only winners to get trophies or is it better for everyone to get a trophy? Those who technically lost felt much better when they received trophies, but the winners did not seem as happy about the fact that they won. In the video, the children were being coddled so they did not have to experience the pain of losing. Some of the parents, though, thought their children needed to understand that they made mistakes so they could learn from them. Getting honest feedback is more beneficial in the long run than getting only positive feedback.

    I thought the video was very interesting. I was shocked when I learned that more people in jail have high self-esteem. If I were to meet someone with very low self-esteem I would perceive them as being more prone to acting violent. Maybe it is because I correlate low self-esteem with having more stress, and when someone is stressed they are more likely to do something they would not normally do. After watching the video, I am thinking about self-esteem in a new way. I do thing that having low self-esteem is more harmful to a person than having higher self-esteem because they are more apt to becoming depressed and that brings on a many other possible conflicts. High self-esteem also gives a person the confidence to go out and be successful in life.

    Key Terms:
    Self-esteem
    Confidence
    Stress
    Depression

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In relation to what you said about being shocked that individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to be in jail...

      Think of it this way...individuals with high-self esteems often think they are invincible. In other words, they think they are above the law, and therefore might not think they'll get caught for their behavior - almost as if the law doesn't apply to them. Make sense?

      Delete
  37. The idea of self-esteem is basically just being confident in yourself and who you are. The video described the idea of a “self-esteem class,” which I perceived was elementary age kids, this taught them that they are one of a kind and to be proud of who they are. Halfway through the video, they talked a test that was given, half of the students were praised and told they were really smart, and the other half was not. From this, they said the students who weren’t told they were really smart, but rather the alternative, were more likely to want to do more the work, whereas the other half of the students were afraid to go on because of the challenge. After this, the video talked about building a child’s self-esteem isn’t always the correct answer, stating that the self-esteem movement was having adverse effects. One of the effects of the movement was saying that students with low-esteem were the students who typically were getting into trouble, meaning that the movement didn’t work on all people.
    I thought the video overall was incredibly interesting. The idea of having “self-esteem class,” I thought was rather ridiculous, because you do want to a child be happy with himself, but what I learned from another one of my teachers is that you can only learn and grow as a person when people disagree with you; this means that when someone is disagreeing with you, you gain the knowledge that they have behind their opinion, and when someone is agreeing with you, it’s basically just inflating your head. Although praise is can be good sometimes, I feel like learning from failure is a better motivation. Simply because say you lose a basketball game, it just makes you want to work harder in the next game; typically if you win a game or two in a row, you become sort of conceded and you have the idea set in your brain that you can go into every game and win, which in turn may make you lose.

    Terms: self-esteem, confidence, perceived, motivation

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    Replies
    1. I don't think the students were told they weren't smart per se, rather, they were told to keep improving and trying.

      Delete
  38. Self-esteem is the overall emotional assessment of a person’s self-worth. The video is about ways to give children self-esteem and confidence in themselves. Nowadays instead of reading and learning, kids are learning to compliment other kids to boost self-esteem in each other. Today, it doesn’t matter if the kid can spell but rather that they feel good about themselves. Coddling is happening inside and outside of classrooms. In sports, “everybody is a winner.” Under the age of ten they don’t keep score and everybody is equal but crowds and coaches are portraying opposite of this belief by yelling on the sidelines. Telling everyone that their great can actually do harm. If every child thinks their great at everything, why would they go beyond their comfort level and try something harder? If you’re telling children their brilliant, they get caught up in being brilliant and not learning. If you don’t point out a child’s weaknesses, how can they ever improve them? I think this could lead to self-deception, by giving a kid distortion of reality and making their weakness less threatening, and therefore not a problem that needs to be fixed. Violence and aggression also may be the result of thinking of themselves as superior because of high self-esteem. Parents don’t know about what’s going on with their children because schools are so caught up in self-esteem and don’t point out weaknesses. I think this video has a lot of good points. I don’t believe that schools should be more focused on self-esteem than learning. I also think it is wrong to constantly coddle kids and not point out their weaknesses. If weaknesses are never pointed out, then they will never be fixed, which could also cause problems later in learning and life. Boosting children’s self-esteem without pointing out their weaknesses is kind of like developing alternative rewards, because satisfying the child with false boosts of self-esteem gives them forms of satisfaction in a false way. I think this could lead to problems later in life, such as dealing with a stressful situation with an unhealthy habit.
    Key Terms:
    Aggression
    Developing alternative rewards
    Self-deception

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  39. I would define self-esteem to be confidence in one’s self. The video mainly talks about how self-esteem is taught in schools to ensure equality. Some schools go so far as to say no failing grades, no honor rolls, no competitions, and no score keeping. Since people with high self-esteem are more successful, children in schools are being taught that they are special and that they are unique. Some teachers object saying that the students may feel good but are not learning. A psychologist talks about how students will not want to challenge themselves or will not be able to handle criticism. A speaker even came in to tell the students that talent is indeed overrated. Conceded people get upset when you “burst their bubble.” Overall, you should praise or reinforce the child’s effort instead of praise how smart they are.

    I believe that the video was accurate in many aspects. My mother is a fourth grade teacher, and I believe she would agree that reinforcement is much more beneficial than complete praise. I am also a competitive person and enjoy a friendly competition. I agree to a certain extent that winning should not be everything, but I also think that competition is necessary to ease into the “real world.” In actuality, competition is all around us. Whoever works hardest gets the job. A person with a good self-image will get the job. Overall, there is a difference between being confident and being cocky. The difference may simply be attitude and modesty.

    The part that stood out to me most would be: “Mistakes are beautiful opportunities to learn.” Mistakes are meant to be made and meant to teach, but that doesn’t mean you should be careless about your mistakes.

    Some of the terms I used include the following: reinforce, self-esteem, self-image, confidence, and attitude.

    ReplyDelete
  40. This video examines the “self-esteem movement,” a movement that encourages the unconditional praise and self-esteem boosting of young students. In schools that utilize this technique, self-esteem classes are given during which the student are taught to love and praise themselves for who they are, regardless of what they do or if they do it well. There are no “winners” and “losers,” no honor rolls, nothing to distinguish students who do well from those who do not. One classroom was students was shown giving each other compliments followed by listing the reasons they special. The movement continues outside the classroom to sporting events as well. A soccer game is shown in which no scores are kept and everyone gets a trophy just for playing. To have a winner would hurt the self-esteem of those who did not win. The self-esteem movement is based on the (unproven) notion that if you give children high self-esteem, they will work harder and get better grades because they feel good about themselves and unafraid to try. This can be done to avoid allowing children to develop inferiority complexes when they are unable to succeed, which may be detrimental to future effort. However, the opposite seems to be the case. Students who are praised without having made any achievement are less likely to try harder in school. Self-esteem comes from achievement; achievement does not follow when you are “given” self-esteem.
    Negative aspects of this approach (in addition to a lack of future effort) include narcissistic personality traits leading to aggression, as was shown by the overly confident study participant who was given a negative comment on his essay. The man was unable to cope with this small acute stressor (a negative comment) and resorted to aggression and even repression, behaving immaturely as he sought to hurt the “partner” who wronged him. Students who grow up this way are conditioned to expect equal positive consequences for every participant in every activity. This of course is a completely unrealistic way to set up a child for life. Because of this, these kids cannot cope with failure once they enter “the real world,” and any ambient social stress (working up in the job ladder, for example) is foreign.
    I found this video very interesting. I think it is fine to praise children for trying even if they have not succeeded to encourage another try, but to take praise away from top students only drags them down. If there is no reason to succeed, why do it? Why not just put in the effort equal to those who are not trying at all and are still being praised. I found it very interesting that this action can lead to violence later in life when students are unable to cope with conflict.
    Words- stress, acute and ambient, regression/aggression, inferiority complex, self-esteem, conditioning, coping

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  41. The concept of self-esteem is the evaluative component of self concept and how one asseses themselves.The video shows how schools are commending their students in the way they perform in class and outside of class in order to build their self-esteem. Everyone gets equal positive treatment and reward no matter how they perform. Some schools and motivational speakers argue that this system is good for children because it relieves the pressure from them and helps them do well in school and in life. However, opposers argue that doing this to the children removes the push they need to perform better and that it could actually harm how they perform in these areas and with their self esteem. The students lack motivation to push themselves and I feel as though that it promotes narcissistic behavior because they are having thier egos boosted even though they do not deserve the reward.

    I truly don't know what to think of the video. However, I believe that positive reinforcement should be given at the appropriate timing not at all times. Giving constant positive reinforcement without any comments on how to improve takes away the motivation for somebody to do better and work hard at solving a problem or achieving a task it constantly satisfies the Id. I also believe that if people don't experience chronic or acute stress at some point in their life they will not know how to handle it in the future, like that kid in the video who was the goalie. He said the feel good classes were going well for him. However when he was experiencing a tempory stress, acute stress, when he was scored against he didn't know how to handle it except through frustration and rage and was displacing it on the ground. What stuck out to me most about the video is that those who thought highly of themselves and them got a negative response about their character displayed high violent responses to people who gave them those comments. It was just really eye-opening, because it means we have to be careful on how we commend or criticize a person because it can have an effect on how they act.

    Key Terms: Displacement, Acute & Chronic Stress, Id, Positive Reinforcement.

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  42. Self-esteem is the confidence and satisfaction with one’s own worth and abilities. This is similar to self- respect and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is different because it uses this confidence in your worth and abilities to make you believe capable of achieving goals.

    This video on self-esteem describes how in school today (1999) students are being taught the importance of self-esteem through songs, activities, and guest speakers. The whole idea is to make kids feel special, regardless of what they do or how they perform. They are eliminating competition and even honor rolls. It is moving into youth sports as well, everybody gets a trophy and they are no longer keeping score. Evidence is coming out that these false senses of self-esteem may actually hurt the kids. In a test, some kids were praised for trying while some were just congratulated on how smart they are. When they failed the next test, kids praised for trying were more eager and less likely to give up. From this simple test, the kids who were praised for hard work already appeared to have more actual confidence in themselves, confident that they could reach a goal. Research is now saying that artificial and grandiose self-esteem is more detrimental to the student; it makes them aggressive and more likely lash out due to disbelief. When given the same tests, convicts have more self-esteem then most college students. When self-esteem is baseless, it can be dangerous. The key is to acknowledge effort and hard work opposed to just how smart they are.

    This video actually kind of upset me. I can see the dangers of being overly praiseful to a child and not congratulating them on their achievements, but just on their effort. It is like classically conditioning the child to settle for mediocrity. When he is praised for trying and not trying, why would he put forth the extra effort when the rewards are the same? I believe people need goals to strive for to improve themselves. If people think they are already full accomplished, then what reason would have to work to become better? It is like telling everyone that they have reached Maslow’s self-actualization, when they are still at the bottom of the pyramid. I think competition is very key to the survival of mankind. Comparing this to the Facebook reading, yes we can have our self-esteem lowered when we see other accomplishments, but deep down I think that this feeling is necessary in order to strive for more. What really stuck out to me was how the children were happy with the participation award, yet disappointed when the other kids would score on him as well as how they inmates had higher self-esteem than college students.

    Terms:
    Self-Efficacy
    Confidence
    Aggression
    Classical conditioning
    Maslow
    Self-actualization

    ReplyDelete
  43. Self-esteem to me is quite simply how one thinks about him or her self. It's your self-concept. The video was talking about how schools at the time (1999) were teaching about self-esteem very seriously. It was even mentioned that it didn't matter if the students were learning anything as long as they had a good self-esteem. Its discussed how self-esteem was being pushed so hard that there was really no competition allowed in anything. For example in sports whether you won or lost your team still got trophies. This bugs me being a big sports fan. Kids aren't learning anything other than I can try really hard to win and get a trophy or not really care and still get a trophy. It's a no brainer and it's not the kids fault either. Adults shouldn't only praise children for 100% work but we definitely shouldn't be praising every kid for doing everything from above average to way below average. We should use positive reinforcement and praise and reinforce good work and behavior which will push other kids to work harder so they too can be praised and rewarded. I feel like kids are going to get over confident and think they really don't have to do anything. We are just setting them up for failure in the real world. The kids that do try hard are simply going to have poor attitude when they see other students who don't get treated the same. Another thing that stuck out to me was how aggression was related to kids that had overly high self-esteems. After a study was done it was found inmates had higher self-esteem than college students.
    Attitude
    Aggression
    Confidence
    Positive Reinforcement

    ReplyDelete
  44. Self-esteem is an individual's conception of his or her own worth in comparison to others. The assigned video takes a closer look at methods of promoting self-esteem being practiced in elementary schools across the nation. Low self-esteem has become an issue among children, with many of them experiencing feelings of not being good enough. To counter these feelings, schools are initiating programs and seminars that are aimed at helping students feel better about themselves. Various studies have shown, however, that such methods may not be entirely effective; it is better to praise students but give honest feedback on mistakes, rather than consistently give nothing other than compliments. Building a child's self-esteem too high makes for a level of arrogance that may later lead to trouble. In addition, parents of the students who were subject to this self-promotional treatment are concerned that their children aren't actually learning anything while in school. If students are constantly being told that they are good enough and don't have to change, how are they supposed to excel at anything? Constant appraisal for remedial tasks was cause for slacking off and little to no ambition for accepting a challenge in children who were studied. Having a high level of self-esteem is essential for success, but too much of it can be equally as detrimental as low self-esteem.
    I enjoyed this video because it brought about issues with overly high self-esteem that I had not considered before. For instance, the narrator/interviewer pointed out how being corrected on our weaknesses allows for opportunity to grow. If we are constantly force-fed the belief that we don't have to try any harder or fix our mistakes, why should we have the drive to get better? By no means does this mean we should stop giving compliments and reinforcing good behavior; honest criticism given in a way that makes an individual realize something has been done incorrectly provides the individual with the confidence and power to work harder and get it right the next time.

    Key terms: confidence, self-esteem, self-promotion, arrogance, appraisal

    ReplyDelete
  45. Self-esteem is how we see ourselves whether positive or negative and it is what we think we are worth and able to do.
    The video discusses about self-esteem and the effects it has on people especially children. It showed at the children's soccer games that it does not matter if they win or lose, because it is not a competition. They did not even keep score and everyone got a trophy at the end because tried their best. It then went on to talk about self-esteem classes that children have to take. Schools are even bringing in speakers to help lift children's self-esteem. They have eliminated honor roll so there is no competition. The video states that this maybe hurting the children not helping. Children are not pushing harder when the are the best at the easy work so they do not have to stress about hard things. It may also be link with narcissism and school shootings. The video ends saying that people should be telling their children the worked hard and should be honest with them not saying they are the best.
    I was very surprised at the video. I did not realized that children had to go to self-esteem was that big of a problem. I do think that going to self-esteem classes everyday and eliminating competition is not the way to go. Competition is helpful to children it helps them push to achieve more. The self-esteem classes make the children However having self-esteem classes once in a while to help children is good just to give them a little boast of confidence.

    Terms: Stress, self-esteem, coping, narcissism, self-efficacy, confidence

    ReplyDelete
  46. Self-esteem is the determination of how much confidence you have and it reflects your overall emotional evaluation of your own worth. It is a judgment of oneself as much as an attitude towards the self. In this video they are trying to make all kids have higher self-esteem and by that try to improve their performance. Nowadays when kids talk about heroes, they are talking about themselves and they do activities about giving compliments. They are writing “me poems” but they don’t know if it is actually working. Some kids are taking self-esteem classes and speakers are earning big money from speaking to school. One coach believes that life isn’t about everybody being equal and telling them that they can’t keep score is silly. There isn’t proof that telling everyone they are great is helping, in fact it may be hurting them. Children were given tests to see how praising their smarts compared to working hard paid off after giving them harder tests. Kids need honest feedback and they need to learn that it doesn’t come easy. However, the self-esteem speaker believes that telling the non-reader that he is a good reader will reinforce that they will become a good reader. It is told to be a boost to their self-image.

    The fact that teachers and schools are now more worried about self-esteem and confidence than learning really sticks out to me. My mom is a teacher and she specializes in reading so hearing the speaker say that just telling a student that they are a good reader when they aren’t isn’t going to help them in the long run. We need to grow a generation of thinkers and harder workers, not only ones that are self-centered and have a good self-image. An attitude change needs to happen to these school districts because by only working on self-esteem, it isn’t going to help them deal with high school and college level courses. Maybe this is just my family background in education talking but I believe that students need to be told the truth because the real world is a tough place and it doesn’t get handed to them with false remarks.

    Key words from chapter:
    Self-image
    Self-esteem
    Confidence
    Reinforce
    Attitude

    ReplyDelete
  47. The concept of self-esteem is how you see yourself. These judgments can be positive or negative, depending on how accomplished you feel.
    The video goes into how kids taught to have high self-image don’t necessarily have the upper hand. Children are almost being over praised and in this video these specific students are spending more time on building their self-esteem than they do on actual school work. The excessive amount of high self-esteems in this video actually scares me. A little self-esteem is definitely a good thing, but too much can push away friends and peers. The children in the video neither receive positive nor negative criticisms and this is resulting in them not feeling as proud to win a soccer game, without the drive to win kids almost have no determination to try. A little competition is healthy, and without giving kids that experience they are in the long run being held back from their true potential.
    My reaction to this video was definitely shock. I cannot imagine being taught to be so conceited as a child. In my house, my parents always stressed that everyone was special in their own way, but never to rub it in other kids’ faces. I believe it is a lack of respect for others to be so openly conceited. I understand that self-confidence is a huge issue, but there are certain limitations that should be placed when teaching kids to believe that it is okay to be so open about their strongpoints.
    Key Terms: self-esteem, confidence, self-image

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  48. I would define self-esteem as the seeing and believing in one’s own self-worth. The video looks at how schools are focusing on building self-esteem and confidence in children. Now a days schools are putting a stronger focus on these aspects and a weaker focus on core learning like reading and writing. The video states that these skills are important because highly successful people generally have high self-esteem. It is surprising that schools continue to teach this way when there is no proof that it is successful. On the contrary there are now studies that suggest that this teaching style may actually hurt the children. Constantly telling children they are smart instead of praising the effort they put forth causes kids to be not as motivated to learn. It is like telling the children they are smart changes their attitude from motivated to learn to unmotivated.
    The point made in this video that really stuck out to me was that having extremely high levels of self-esteem could lead to aggression and violence. I generally assumed that violent events, like school shootings, were a result of bulling and extremely low levels of self-esteem. I guess the combination of stress and someone with high enough self-esteem that they thing they are better than others could easily develop feelings of aggression. This narcissism combined with the feelings of aggression could easily manifest itself into violent action.

    Key Terms: Self-esteem, confidence, attitude and narcissism

    ReplyDelete
  49. Self-esteem is the concept of how one thinks of one’s self. This concept applies to thoughts of one’s own worth as well as an attitude towards the self. A high self-esteem is when one thinks highly of one’s self, with a positive attitude about personality and the self. A low self-esteem is the polar opposite, generally associated with lesser confident people.

    The youtube video provides evidence on the new self-esteem movement. It shows the movement of using self-esteem boosting techniques in young children in order to promote healthier living and thinking. It continues to the current movement of providing evidence on how that style of living can be detrimental, especially to youth.

    The video provided several key points on how the overly encouraged self-esteem in youth and schools can be detrimental by not teaching the value of work. This was demonstrated in a series of experiments shown on the video. One of which was a combination of simple and difficult tests. Two groups of students were given the simple tests and encouraged for giving correct answers, one group was encouraged by saying how smart they were for getting the correct answers and the other was encouraged by saying how hard they tried. For the second test which consisted of harder questions, both students did poorly and given the same encouragement (intelligence versus effort), the results were much more positive for the student that was encouraged with effort, he established an interest in challenges and looked forward to more tests whereas the student that was praised solely on intelligence was discouraged and didn’t want to try anymore.

    I was very surprised at the lengths to which some schools go to promote self-esteem. I wasn’t aware that some schools were putting such effort into it. The fact that schools are completely eliminating honor’s roll programs or low grades just in an effort to keep the students thinking positively about themselves was truly shocking to me. I was already made aware of some of the activities in youth sports, being a big part of the local athletics of several ages back home, but to see entire schools doing this *just* to see their students succeed with a high self-esteem rather than a strong ability to adapt and become flexible was very disturbing. I also found the entire overconfidence overtones to be very interesting, asking the question at which point does building confidence in youth become creating overconfidence?

    Key Terms:
    self-esteem
    confidence
    overconfidence
    attitude

    ReplyDelete
  50. Self-esteem is the concept of how we perceive ourselves, in either positive or negative ways. It relates to how we respond to our social interactions and helps define us as individuals. An individual with a high self-esteem is bound to be more confident, engage in more social activities and plays a large role in what helps define success. An individual with a low self-esteem is more likely to have the adverse effects of a person with a high self-esteem.

    The video clip on self-esteem shows an interesting look into what education administrations thought could boost children's self-esteem and the evidence of what their "self-esteem movement" actually did for youngsters self-esteem. The thought was to eliminate negative enforcers from academics, athletics, and nearly all facets of students lives. If children constantly succeed, the trend will set in and we will have a more productive and confident future generation, right?

    Not exactly. In studies done, results showed that students who were told how awesome and successful they were were less likely to stick with a task that proved to be daunting or difficult. Essentially they folded when encountering adversity. On the other hand, students who were praised for their effort were more eager to take another crack and a difficult task.

    I think that we are doing America's youth a grave injustice by handing out accomplishments and awards for everyone who participates. As the video points out, it leads to overconfidence and a sense of self entitlement in youth that will face a harsh reality when they grow up and try to enter the work force. I think almost anyone over the age of eighteen would agree, if you really want something in life you have to work and strive for it. Nothing comes on a silver platter and if you wait for it to come you will be waiting a long time. Children should be taught that effort is the key to success, and we can praise them for their effort. But not for simply showing up.

    After all, there is no such thing as a free meal.

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    1. Don't forget to list your keyterms.

      Delete
  51. To begin this post I think it is important to give my definition of self-esteem. To me self-esteem is simply how someone feels about himself or herself. A person’s self-esteem may be higher or lower on any given day based on many different factors such as doing a good deed or lying to someone. In the youtube video that we were assigned to watch the main premise was that schools may be putting too much emphasis on self-esteem and teaching self-esteem to the students. Not only does the narrator imply that self-esteem classes are not beneficial but that they may actually be harmful.

    One of the issues the narrator addresses is that many schools or activities are giving participation awards or doing away with honor roll so that no one feels left out or unappreciated. A psychologist featured in the piece named Carrol Duwett has done studies that show praising students in specific ways may actually hurt them. In her study students were given an easy task to accomplish. When they completed that task half the students were told that they did very well and were very smart. While the other half was still told that they did will but that they must have tried very hard. When that same group of students was given a much more difficult even impossible task those who had been told they were smart didn’t want to challenge themselves. On the other hand the students who were told they had tried hard wanted to push themselves to do better.

    The narrator then goes on to state that people’s idea of violent people having low self-esteem may not be accurate. In fact the opposite may be true. To find out the answer to this the narrator looked at a study done by Bushman and Baumeister. Their study first had people take a self-esteem assessment. After they had completed that they were told to write an essay, which a third party would score. The people with extremely high self-esteem were told that their essay was the worst they had ever read. The participants were then given the opportunity to get back at this third party by blasting music at them. The participants with the highest self-esteem often were the most violent. The self-esteem assessment was then given to 65 convicts and it was found that as a group the convicts feel much better about themselves than the average college student. Based on all these studies the narrator concludes that maybe overall self-esteem pushes are not helpful and that instead children should be praised for trying hard.

    I personally had a hard time going along with this video mainly because I do think it is important for student’s self-esteem to be bolstered. With as many youth that we have today who have depression or other mental health issues I think it is still important to let those kids know that they are important and that they should feel good about themselves. Another approach to that could be to work on a student’s self-concept. I believe since we live in such an individualistic society that relies on each person’s abilities if people don’t believe in their abilities the society as a whole may suffer. I agree with the video that there is a point where it is going to far however. When a school is putting more emphasis on self-esteem than actual academic achievement then that is a problem for me. I also agree with the final statement of the video, which basically states that it is how we bolster a student’s self-esteem that makes the difference. This video would have been a lot easier for me to go along with if that would have been brought up more often than simply putting down self-esteem courses.

    Key Terms
    Self-esteem
    Self-concept
    Individualistic

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  52. self esteem is how one person views themselves , the higher ones self esteem the more confidence they have in ones abilities and love they have for themselves. on the flipside someone who has low self esteem would be much less confident and not to happy with themselves.

    the video explained how teaching kids to have high self esteem is now a priority in schooling. they accomplish this though eliminating competition, giving students better grades easier and having self esteem classes, all so students can feel better about themselves which the schools believe to be beneficial by molding there personalities for success . The narrator on the other hand believes otherwise through tests and surveys he gathered he found that people with highest self esteems were the most prone to violence and aggression, and that people in prison's were tested to have really high self esteems, along with a study on children where the children who were told they had word hard rather then your so smart performed better.
    I found this video to be interesting, and the fact that people who are very successful have high self esteem and also people who are incarcerated. I think the way the children are being taught in the video have an equal amount of benefits as pitfalls giving the children higher self esteem will make them more likely to try to express there talents and themselves fully, but it can promote a deranged self image that would keep the child from knowing his faults which need improvement.
    terms: self actualization,
    confidence
    aggression
    attitude
    positive reinforcement

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  53. The textbook definition of self-esteem is “One’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a person; the evaluative component of the self-concept.” This video was very interesting to watch because it brought up a valid point relating to self-esteem and education. The video claims that it’s better to tell a child that they “worked really hard” rather than telling them they’re “so smart”. This is because only telling a child that he’s smart all of the time, only boosts his or her confidence and really gets the child no where. They have no motivation to actually learn because they are reinforced that they’re brilliant and “special”. This is only boosting their self-image to the point of where children are being taught to think they are better than everyone else. In the video, children at school were being praised for everything that they did whether it came to school or sports. The sports teams under the age of ten even stopped keeping scores, and gave trophies to both the winners and losers. I can see how this could possibly be positive, because I know that sports can become incredibly competitive, and parents have even gotten kicked out of games and banned, etc. for being so negative at the games. However, diminishing all competitiveness is unrealistic for the way children perceive themselves. I think the points this video brought up are valid and the country as a whole should really look into this further and make some changes.



    Self-esteem
    Reinforces
    Self-image
    Confidence
    Perceive

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  54. Self-esteem, as defined by the book, refers to one's overall assessment of one's worth as a person. It also says that self-esteem is the result of self-evaluation as a function of self-concept, which is an organized collection of beliefs about the self.

    This video provided information on what promotion of self-esteem could actually be doing. Many schools have taken it upon themselves to hire speakers, incorporate self-esteem lessons into curriculum, etc., to provide their students with a boosted self-esteem. Parents thought that this could actually be hurting their children: wondering if they were really learning what they should be learning instead of being told to feel good about themselves. This video also shed light on many myths about self-esteem. It used to be believed that violent crimes, like school shootings, were done by people with low self-esteem. This idea was actually contradicted by giving prisoners a survey that was also given to undergrads that showed that the prisoners felt better about themselves than the undergrads did, and also by a study where people who tested high in self-esteem were criticized, and then given the option to "punish" the person who criticized them, revealing that the kids with a high self-esteem were quicker to become aggressive in punishing their critic. One point that really stood out to me, made by psychology professor Carol Dweck, was "When you praise children lavishly for easy things, why should that make them want to do hard things?" She did a study on fifth graders, giving them a puzzle tests. The first one was easy, but half of the students were told they were "smart" and half of the students were told they "must have tried hard" after successfully completing the easy puzzle. Then, given harder puzzles, the kids who had been called smart struggled with the fact that they weren't doing so well, while the kids who were praised for trying hard were eager to keep trying. To "tell Johnny he's brilliant" gets him "caught up in being brilliant, rather than learning."

    I think this video reveals a lot of correct information. Living with a seven-year-old and watching him grow up and compete on different sports teams and come home telling us what he did in school, I completely understand what's going on in this video. I agree that children are fed the wrong kind of feedback on the daily. My parents are really good about giving Collin, my little brother, the right kind of feedback. One thing that really stuck out to me was when they were interviewing the little soccer player and a dad of the soccer player and they talked about everybody giving a trophy and not keeping score. I like that the dad said that that's not how life works. My brother played on a T-ball team this summer that didn't keep score and that was fun for him, but he also does AAU wrestling. My step dad acts as his coach on the side of the mat when he does tournaments. I've watched Collin lose, and he's run to my step dad's arms crying and John always gives him good feedback about winning and losing, and my parents have ALWAYS preached that as long as you do your best, you're fine. We got praise for doing our best, but we were definitely criticized if they knew we could have worked harder. So I think what teachers WANT to do in classrooms is a good idea, but they are doing it the wrong way. You can't praise a child for not doing anything. Our generation is just like Dweck mentioned, we don't want to do the hard work. It's a bad way to be sending today's college students into the working world today, thinking they're good enough to do something when they actually aren't.

    Key Terms:
    Self-Esteem
    Self-Concept
    Aggression

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    Replies
    1. Great job applying these concepts to your life experiences.

      Delete
  55. Self esteem is one's overall assessment of one's self worth. Self concept and self discrepancies also plays an important role in self esteem, because self concept is how one sees themselves physically, mentally, and socially, while self discrepancies is the gap between how people see themselves and how they would like to see themselves.

    The video is about promoting self esteem in school and sports events for school age children and how it makes them feel better and believe they are all winners. Studies are brought in saying that praising children will hinder them when they come across something that challenges them beyond what they think they can do. Theses studies do not seem to affect the people teaching self esteem classes. Some studies even suggest that violence, a trait once thought of in low self esteem cases, is actually a trait of falsified high self esteem. I was actually shocked that schools take money to teach self esteem classes and then praise students for doing basically nothing. I come from a very rural area and you were awarded for succeeding and you got nothing if you lost or did poorly. I think that hyping people's self esteem just to make them feel good about themselves can be dangerous, because it basically sets them up for failure, from which could be psychologically damaging.
    Key terms: self esteem, self concept, self discrepancies,

    ReplyDelete
  56. In my opinion, the concept of self-esteem is to praise yourself and boost your confidence. After watching the video on failure is good, I understood exactly what the point is: you can't praise children for doing easy tasks and expect them to try harder tasks. I wouldn't say that is a motto by any means but I live by the thought of having to work hard in order to earn what you think you deserve. I am super in to politics and this concept really hit it home with me. Feeding our children with praises for every little accomplishment, or lack of (participation trophies), is getting them no where and setting them up for failure. I feel like society tries to influence kids to be individualistic yet they want everyone to feel accomplished whether or not they truly succeeded? That concept is polar opposite to me.
    The pitfall would be children thinking it is acceptable to settle when they should be striving for much better.

    Key terms:
    Self-esteem
    individualistic

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  57. The concept of self-esteem is feeling good about yourself. It depends on everyday if your self-esteem will be higher or lower than the day before. While watching the video I noticed right away that the schools were trying to teach the children self-esteem. But I believe it cannot be taught like those kids were being taught. Those teachers seemed to be beating it down those kids' throats and the video even said that it worked for some and didn't work for others. The one part that I understood the most was the part with the kids playing soccer. I could see it as trying to boost self-esteem in kids by not keeping score but it would never work because kids already know the difference between winning and loosing. And it doesn't help when your parents are standing on the sideline shouting at you telling you that you are behind; that is defeating the point that they are trying to make with the kids. The one boy who was a goalie and was on the team that lost, he said that it was great that everyone got a trophy and made everyone feel good about themselves; but when the video played back to him playing you could tell every time the other team scored on him his self-esteem went down by watching him beat his fists on the ground. You can see his attitude change from being happy and feeling good about himself and then take a downward spiral and feel horrible about yourself.
    I found it hard to connect with the video, besides the soccer part, because of the time period the video was recorded in. I know kids are kids but this day in age kids have a harder time thinking that they are good enough because of all the more pressure to be and do better which adds stress to your life and children do not need that kind of stress in elementary school. I didn't agree with how the teachers were spending that much time on teaching them self-esteem. I think they should lay off the teaching of self-esteem and focus on their academics and reward those who did their best and acknowledge those who put effort into their work; which to me would get a greater response in bringing up someones self-esteem.

    Key Terms: Self-esteem, attitude, stress

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    Replies
    1. Yes, the video is definitely dated and I don't think they are actually teaching this much anymore. However, I wanted to provide an example of the downside of self-esteem, as our textbook mostly paints a pretty portrait of it.

      Delete
  58. Self-esteem is how a person feels about themselves, I feel it can go up or down depending on how their day is going but it is best to keep it as controlled and level as possible. This video was very interesting because of all the questions it has raised. Schools have been using this idea of no one is wrong, there is just a better answer then the one you gave. The idea of everyone is a winner and needs to feel special about themselves. No matter what they do in life what mistakes they have made they are still winners. I believe this is setting children up for self-destruction. The children in this video are happy that they are never being left out they are always happy about themselves no matter who they are or what they do. And I believe that this is a good skill to learn as a child is growing up. But there is a certain point in a child’s life that they need to learn that what they do matters. They need to know there self-attributes and at the same time to know their weakness. This example was shown in the study of the test giving to the children, one set were told that they were really smart, but the other set were told that they worked very hard. The kids that were told they were smart were less likely to try hard when the test became challenging unlike they kids that were told they tried hard. The kids that were told they tried hard used that drive to try to do better in everything they did after that. If we are all good at something and know one is bad at anything where does the motivation to do a great job come from? As the video pointed out many times this is such a hard thing to study because we are not sure of the effects if we changed this view of building everyone’s self-esteem up. They gave a group of prisoners and a group of college students a test to see how high their self-esteem was, thinking that criminals would have lower self-esteems because they never were giving this treatment of love and self-worth. But they found that prisoners felt better about themselves then the college students did. But this also goes into the matter of false self-esteem, such as the school shooter in the video he was said to have high false self-esteem letting him to believe that he could do this because it really wasn’t wrong, it was just different and that was ok. Also in video they talk about giving trophies away to every kid win or lose, well yes that make the losers feel better but what about those kids that work really hard and had the talent to win it all. To me that takes away from all their work, it tells them to not work as hard it is not worth the time and effort because they are going to feel like winners anyway. This can lead to the class room and beyond as explain in the end of the video. Most school are preforming above average but will all this talk of no kid could be wrong what is average any more, can a student be above average as much as can they be below average?
    Self-attributions-inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior (are any of these controllable or uncontrollable)
    Self-verification theory-people prefer to receive feedback from others that is consistent with their own self views
    Self enhancement is the tendency to maintain positive feelings about oneself
    Downward social comparison is a defensive tendency to compare oneself with someone who’s troubles are more serious than yours
    Self-regulations is the process of directing and controlling one’s behavior
    Self-defeating behavior are seemingly intentional actions that thwart a person’s self interest
    Ingratiation is behaving in way to make oneself likable to others
    Public self is an image presented to others in social interactions
    Self-monitoring refers to the degree to which people attend to a and control the impression they make on others

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  59. Self-esteem is a person's concept and judgment of themselves and an attitude about how they feel about themselves. If a person has good self-esteem, then they are confident in themselves.
    The video talked about self-esteem and children. It is better to tell the children what a good job that they did instead of how smart they are. For this reason, the children will then have higher confidence. All the false sense of self-esteem may lead the kids on. This may actually hurt the children because they will not feel the need to try any harder, if they are being told that they are already doing their best. If everyone is basically told that they are equal, then everyone is getting neither positive or negative reinforcement. This might make the children not form their own self-esteem. I personally thought it was a little overdone. I believe kids need to be told that they are doing good and trying, but not to the extent where it becomes like an assembly line and the children do not get any recognition for his or her special tasks.
    Key terms:
    Self-esteem
    Appraisal
    Perceive
    Confidence

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  60. The concept of self-esteem is how a person feels about themselves. The video brought up a lot of good, valid points. You can't tell a child "you're so smart" all the time and expect them to work hard because they won't put forth that effort. The video showed how children were being praised school and sport wise and were therefore thinking they were the best. This could create problems because when difficult situations came up, they would not know how to deal with them. I was very shocked that schools actually put money towards self-esteem classes when they are almost dangerous to a kids because they lead to the establishment of a false high/ positive self-esteem. No positive or negative reinforcement is being used when kids are being told that they are pretty much already the best they can be in various aspects. Kids need to be told they are doing well and that their efforts matter, but not to the extent where they don't put forth the necessary effort.

    Key terms are: Confidence, self-esteem, attitude, self-concept

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  61. Self-esteem is the assessment of one's self in regards to their confidence and personal perception of their value. With high self-esteem comes a high sense of satisfaction about one's worth, and with a low self-esteem, one will feel as though they have a lesser value in comparison with others.

    This topic of this video is certainly controversial, and I definitely understand the points made on both sides of the argument. On one hand, it is vital that children are raised to believe they are of value and have potential; it is essential to them developing a strong sense of self-worth and confidence as they mature. On the other hand, children in the video are rewarded where reward is clearly unwarranted; this gives a false sense of worth, and may inflate a child's sense of accomplishment, giving them the notion that they deserve more credit than they actually do- this is damaging to them later in life, when they must learn that not everything will be given to them upon reaching truly competitive adulthood.

    This topic is really tricky. I think the best way to go about bettering children's self-esteem is to lightly scold and guide them when they lack effort and participation, reward and recognize their hard work and efforts when they truly involve themselves, and reward them greater when they perform exceptionally well, or exceed expectations.

    Key terms: self-esteem, self-worth, confidence

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