Fox Talkers: The Recession Was Good For Kids Because It Humbled Them
So, Andrea Tantaros thinks the recession is a good thing because it took kids down a notch or two and made them feel less entitled? Really? This segment from Wednesday's show should have been shot and put out of its misery before it ever hit the air. It makes me (almost) long for the days of Glenn Beck.
The reason for this little seven-minute bashing session? A Washington Post article which reports that education researchers are finding that challenging kids to achieve rather than simply rewarding them without effort is a good thing. This surprises people? As the parent of three kids, I didn't need the Washington Post to tell me something I already knew. To support their reason to waste seven minutes of air time, they go on about those sports where kids get participation trophies without actually achieving anything. Gutfeld takes it one step farther, saying this, 35 seconds in:
GUTFELD: According to the Washington Post, growing research has found that always praising kids makes them shy away from real challenges for fear they will soil their perfect record, meaning real success is no option when you never dare to fail. Said one researcher, "We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter. That has backfired."
So what's the long-term harm to all this feel-good nonsense? Well, by encouraging kids to look internally for validation, we've disconnected feeling good from doing good. Rewarding you for being you means you could be a crappy you forever. And that leads to one place: jail. After all, the people with the highest self-esteem are killers, because if you think you're really special, it's easier to get rid of those who aren't. Far better to instill a little self-loathing in your kids. If anything it'll be great preparation for middle age.
This stellar advice comes from a guy who once said the worst part of the right and left is the moralizing.
Here's where this little rant on self-esteem goes farther off the rails. I don't believe this is about education or self-esteem or trophies or achievement. This is really a way to subtly trash what Fox views as a liberal parenting mindset; that is, children don't have to be raised with authoritarian, negative messages to be productive achievers. Moreover, when Greg Gutfeld leads off with "Is 'Yes You Can' a pointless scam?" as his first sentence, be assured it's really intended to trash more than an approach to education. Think 2008 campaign slogans.
Young people today are facing myriad challenges. Daily they are told that they must rise to the level of a meaningless test that doesn't do anything but undermine their actual K-12 education. Daily they hear that they will not succeed without college. Yet, the cost of a college education is skyrocketing, especially in the public universities as states cut funding. If they manage to graduate without being in debt up to their eyeballs, there aren't a lot of jobs out there so they can begin to retire their debt. Their parents are being squeezed for health care costs and in many cases, are opening their homes post-graduation because without jobs, those young people can't really afford to live anywhere. But let's not disturb this group of yammerers with things like facts, shall we?
This all happens after they've been told since before they could read that the only way they would succeed was to work really, really hard in kindergarten through their senior year in high school so they could go to college, get a degree, and get a good-paying job. Over and over again they heard that. That's not about schools building self-esteem; it's about promises made and broken. It wasn't lost on me that one of the panelists sends their child to a "ridiculously expensive school", either. In public schools, there's no time to waste stroking kids' egos. They have tests to pass, goals to meet, after all.
At around 5:30, they finally get around to the Occupy movement bashfest, courtesy of Eric Bolling:
