Re: What's in a name?

[jamolnar@juno.com]

On Fri, 15 Aug 1997 19:38:22 -0400 (EDT) Amado Narvaez
<anarvaez@umd5.umd.edu> writes:
>
>On Fri, 15 Aug 1997 Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote:
> 
>> Some people imagine that this process lowers the children's 
>self-esteem, and
>> we all know that having self-esteem is >far< more important than 
>knowing
>> anything...
>
>Reading between the lines, one might think that DinoGeorge believes 
>that
>promoting self-esteem contributes to lower SAT scores. A good teacher 
>can
>promote good self-esteem and still prepare students for any career 
>from
>film-making to astrophysics. Knowledge and self-esteem are not 
>mutually
>exclusive

I think George is taking a swing at teachers who truly believe that the
*only* way a child learns is if their self-esteem is the _first_
priority.  You can't disappoint them in any way, nor correct them even
constructively.  There are too many people out there that take this way
overboard, and the extreme is not really conducive to true learning in
the long run.

If I read him right, he has no objection to *taking a child's feelings
into account when you gently correct him or her.*  The latter is a
totally different approach to the "self-esteem first" crowd. Since people
are not born knowing everything, they must make mistakes to learn.  It is
the job of parents and teachers to correct those mistakes constructively,
in the ways you have already outlined in your previous post.  If
corrections didn't change the way we feel, positive or negative, we
wouldn't remember them.  Go for the positive, when you can.  But if a
correction may hurt a little bit, I'd rather gently correct than say
nothing at all.  The kids are counting on us to lead them the right way.

Judy Molnar
Education Associate, Virginia Living Museum
vlmed@juno.com
jamolnar@juno.com
All questions are valid; all answers are tentative.