From Olasky, at WorldMagBlog,
Former student of mine who now runs a business: "Do you know of any articles or books about leading/working with generation Yers? Most of our staff are that age, and I'm finding they have no concept of authority. They don't rebel against authority, they just don't think it applies to them...
Meanwhile, Joe Carter muses, over at FRCBlog, about The Peril of Praising Your Kids,
[My] Mom believed that effort was more important than intelligence. And as Po Bronson writes in New York magazine, she might be right:
When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.
But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.
I wonder... are these two phenomenon related?
Is it that farfetched to think that young adults who have, since their birth, been coddled, catered to, praised, honored, and generally worshipped, would enter the real world with, at most a sense of arrogant superiority and, at least a lack of a sense of their quantitative status within our society's hierarchy? Are we building underperformers who, despite their underperformance, think highly of themselves? If a parent raises his child as if the child and he are best friends, then the parent has effectively stated that there is no authoritative hierarchy within the relationship (i.e., the relationship is between two equals, in terms of authority). In attempting to relate to children, we may actually be eroding a needed sense of authority. For instance, when children are allowed to address teachers (much less adults) by their first name, the familiarity that is sought also breeds a sense of equality, again, in terms of authority.
And so we churn out low performers with high self esteem who don't understand the concept of authority. Not a good recipe for success.
Update: Albert Mohler also posts on the New Yorker article.
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