单项选择题

No one would argue that children thrive when they feel respected, important, and cared for by other persons, or that they falter when they lack the self-pride and self-confidence that accompanies such approval and support. However, at the hands of educators eager to encourage lagging pupils, a myth has developed that raising youngsters’ self-esteem is a sure means of improving their levels of achievement and solving many of the nation’s social ills.
A 1990 report, for instance, proposes that "self-esteem is the likeliest candidate for a ’social vaccine’, something that empowers us to live responsibly and that keeps us from the lure of crime, teen pregnancy, and educational failure. The lack of self-esteem is central to more personal and social ills plaguing our state and nation as we approach the end of the twentieth century."
By the 1960s, following the advent of the self-actualization theories of personal growth espoused by psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, interest in enhancing self-esteem as a path to accomplishment got under way in the nation’s schools. Since then, dozens of "how-to" books have described ways for improving children’s positive feeling about themselves. The theory is simple: Feeling good is a necessary predecessor of accomplishment.
Despite its current popularity, questions can be raised about the assumptions underlying the self-esteem movement. For example, what benefit does a third-grader gain in telling herself, "I am smart," "I am a good student,"—all forms of the "affirmative language" advocated by Douglas Bloch in his book Positive Self-talk for Children
Does it really enhance the self-esteem of members of the fifth-grade baseball team—or improve their athletic skill—when everyone is awarded a trophy, despite the fact that the team did not show noticeable improvement throughout the season What effect will this have on next year’s efforts when this record of performance ends with apparent approval and satisfaction Countless statistics and surveys have had a unanimous(一致的) result: nothing is changed, and the days go on the same as ever.
People are eager to praise the toddler for a few tentative steps and the two-year-old for simply attempting to match form with hole in a puzzle board. Self-esteem is heightened in the young child through such love and approval. Older kids, though, are foxy analysts and know when performance merits praise and when it does not. Repeating indiscriminate praise or acclaiming minimal accomplishments run the risk of transforming positive response into meaningless flattery(恭维).
Self-esteem theorists appear to have it backwards. Meaningful self-evaluation and positive self-esteem usually are the results, not the prerequisites(前提), of accomplishment. Praise is just one source of feedback; self-esteem more often comes from an awareness that the requirements of a sought-after goal have been mastered. Acquiring the knowledge and skills that enable a child to make progress toward such goals is a necessary basis for developing healthy, realistic self-esteem.
Sports are an arena in which Americans generally have little reluctance to require hard work and persistence. Coaches do not hesitate to point out errors and mistakes. Children’s self-esteem does not appear to suffer when they are told that they need to practice more and concentrate on the task at hand. The usual effect is renewed effort to work, practice, and learn.
In contrast, Americans are reluctant to have teachers evaluate the academic performance of their elementary school children with more than a "satisfactory" or "needs improvement." Later, parents urge high schools to adopt more lenient(宽松的)grading systems, worried that the children’s self-esteem will plummet when they find that the "satisfactory" of earlier years now has become a "C’ or "D."
Sympathetic teachers, aware of the difficulties students encounter in their everyday lives, often relinquish standards in an effort to build students’ self-confidence. In doing so, they deprive youngsters of the kinds of experience that are prerequisite to later success. Students are fooled and their prospects for later employment are placed in jeopardy when teachers fail to teach them how diligence and effort can help to avoid academic problems, and when they fail to provide children with realistic feedback in meeting well-defined, challenging goals.
American students face a bleak future if they are unable to compete with their peers, both in the U. S. and other industrialized countries. The seriousness of the matter becomes evident in the results of comparative studies of academic achievement. In one, for example, 96% of Chinese and 90 % of Japanese fifth-graders tested had mathematics scores higher than the average of their counterparts in the U.S. Results are not much better at the 11 th-grade level: 86% of the Chinese and 92% of the Japanese received scores above American average scores.
One might guess from the growing emphasis on self-esteem that American children generally have a negative self-image. This is not the case. In research conducted with representative samples of 11 th-graders and their parents in Minnesota and Virginia, for instance, we found that Americans seem to have an unusually positive image of themselves. Participants were asked to rate the student’s achievement in mathematics on a seven-point scale where a rating of four was defined as average. Both students and their parents made ratings whose averages were significantly above average—that is, above four. "Above average" ratings were not limited to academic areas; the students gave themselves these ratings on a diverse array of characteristics, including athletic skills, physical appearance, and how well they got along with others. Chinese and Japanese students and parents made more realistic appraisals: their average ratings conformed more closely to the average as the researchers had defined it.
Evaluations made by the Americans do not describe students plagued by self-doubt and in need of strong reassurance. Of course, there are American youngsters who have low self-esteem and who respond to this hy giving up academic pursuits. Nevertheless, the principal challenge, it seems, is not so much in building up their self-esteem as in teaching them that all students are capable of raising their levels of performance if they are willing to work hard.
We asked several thousand American and East Asian students to tell us what was most important for doing well in school. The most common response of the East Asian students was "studying." The U. S. students said "a good teacher". The difference in the place of responsibility reflected in these answers well may reveal the consequences of a "feel good" approach.
What conclusions can be drawn First, it is through progress and accomplishment that students develop the confidence which underlies solid self-esteem. Second, meeting challenging goals and receiving accurate feedback provides a sense of competence that leads to a healthy, realistic basis for feeling good about oneself. There is no evidence that adopting ever-higher standards as they learn and requiring students to work harder will lower their positive feelings about their abilities.
Having kids tell themselves "I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doughnut, people like me" may be comforting for the moment, but we delude ourselves if we think a "feel good" approach will solve the problems of educating America’s children and protecting the nation from social ills.
Praise and award certificates—the currency of the self-esteem movement—are cheap. More tangible types of reform that rely on redesigning institutions such as schools are expensive, difficult, and time-consuming. Even so, Americans must be as hardheaded and as clear as their competitors in realizing that an effective educational system for children and youth are fundamental to a nation’s health and progress. Feeling good is fine; it is even better when people have something to feel good about. In the author’s opinion, real self-esteem usually comes from meeting worthwhile goals combined with ______.