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Self-Esteem? Hardly! A truth about some students . . .

Self-Esteem? Hardly! A truth about some students . . .

Last updated on: August 26, 2016 at 8:55 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Self-Esteem? Hardly! A truth about some students . . . 2016-08-26T08:55:29-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Waterhouse,_La_belle_dame_sans_merci_opt I know one student with too much self-esteem for every ten I know with too little. This isn’t science, just an anecdote from a teacher.

We are a strange and glorious experiment . . . kindergarten through college education. Imagine a college student being in the same “house” as a five year old and both of them gardening, listening to stories, learning to think, playing music (even if at different times and rooms)!

One thing this experiment helps me to see as a teacher is that at least for my students there is a lack of any self-esteem. Tell a student they are smart and they will roll their eyes . . . tell them they are stupid and you are safe. Sarcasm is the only way to communicate a message, because only sarcasm (or irony) can be trusted.

If somebody tells you “you are special” or “I love you,” then they are selling you something.

Colleges tell students they “care about you” and the administration sits and discusses “data points” and “units” of income. I have never spoken of anyone I loved and cared about as a data unit or a source of income and neither have you. These schools are marketing a lie: empire building disguised as personal care.

Churches tell students “God loves you and so do we,” but when I call to get a pastoral reference, nobody knows the family until they look up the giving records. Students know this truth. They are not fooled.

And so when they get to school nothing positive we say matters at first. They roll their eyes. They assume a con. Where is the bill? What are we after?

They have been ripped off so often that they think sincerity is sarcasm, sarcasm is hatefulness, and hatefulness the way the universe is.

Christian educators are stuck saying: Sincerity is reality, sarcasm is a tool that can be used at times, and hatefulness is a lie and unreal. Nobody believes us, because a prosperity gospel preacher has just ripped off the parent of the student with a promise of miraculous wealth and happiness.

The result is that generally people think we have too much positivity, too much love, too many hugs. We have too few.

We have fake positivity, insincere protestations of “love,” and a slap on the back that retreats from genuine community. Genuine community means pain and so we hide from it. Real friendship means risk and so we join a Facebook interest group and leave any social circle and blacklist any person that makes us uncomfortable.

We hate ourselves and so hate everyone around us. This could be summed up as: “Hate your neighbor as you hate yourself.”

My students are not narcissistic as self-haters. Let me not guess why, but say: we need schools that sincerely love students and eschew profit and empire building. We don’t need bigger buildings, but professors that will sit and listen. We need safe spaces, but not spaces safe from pain.

The idea of “safe spaces” is easy for a conservative, like I am, to ridicule. Too often the phrase means: don’t challenge my ideas. Education cannot exist in that kind of safe space, but most of my students need safe spaces. They need to know that they will not be rejected for wrong opinions, but they will be challenged. They must believe that there is virtue, wisdom, and joy at the end of the journey and not just a bill for four years of parties, football, and beer.

They need loving mentors. I have a few students who need “taking down a peg or two,” but scores who need knowing: we do love you and do mean to do well by you. We are not here to make money, but to educate. We are not here to get big or powerful. We are here to serve the people of Antioch, the place where people were first called Christians. We are here to love all God’s children in Houston.

Can this be done?

I don’t know, but the problems I face are not a lack of self-esteem. They are young adults burned out on easy access to evil through their phones. They are kids who have never known a dad, grand-dad, or great-grand-dad. They have never known a gentleman.

That is the world I face.

I am unsure of the source of the problem . . . only that an entire generation needs real books, real teachers, real education and the knowledge that even the “average” person is a soul created in the image of God.

God help us to tell this truth: we are mostly average, but all souls created in the Image of God. That is enough to say: every student has hope of being like God eternally in the New Jerusalem.

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