The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

One of the greatest gifts a teacher can offer a student is the refusal to accept the student’s poor self-concept at face value.

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  For this reason, when I speak at teachers’ conferences, I often spend much of my time talking about what educators can do to raise the level of their own self-esteem rather than about what they can do for the self-esteem of students. Remember the guru with the weakness for sweets.

  Expectations

  To give a child the experience of acceptance does not mean, as we have already noted, to signal “I expect nothing of you.” Teachers who want children to give their best must convey that that is what they expect.

  Research tells us that a teacher’s expectations tend to turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. If a teacher expects a child to get an A—or a D—either way, expectations tend to become realities. If a teacher knows how to convey “I am absolutely convinced you can master this subject, and I expect you to and will give you all the help you need,” the child feels nurtured, supported, and inspired.

  A classroom in which what is wanted and expected is that one will give one’s best is a classroom that develops both learning and self-esteem.

  The Class Environment

  If the primary goal of the educational system is one factor that has consequences for a child’s self-esteem, and if the teacher’s own self-esteem is another, yet a third is the classroom environment. This means the way the child is treated by the teacher and sees other children being treated.

  1. A child’s dignity. One of the painful things about being a child is that one tends not to be taken seriously by adults. Whether one is dismissed discourteously or praised for being “cute,” most children are not used to having their dignity as human beings respected. So a teacher who treats all students with courtesy and respect sends a signal to the class: You are now in an environment where different rules apply than those you may be used to. In this world, your dignity and feelings matter. In this simple way a teacher can begin to create an environment that supports self-esteem.

  I recall an incident many years ago when I was invited to speak at a school for gifted children. During my presentation I invited the students to talk about what it was like to be labeled “a gifted child.” They spoke enthusiastically about the pluses, but they also spoke about minuses. Some talked about the discomfort of being treated as a “family resource.” Some talked about the high expectations of their parents that did not necessarily relate to their own interests and needs. They talked about wanting to be treated “like normal human beings.” And they talked about the ways even loving adults did not necessarily treat them seriously. Present in the room, in addition to the students, were most of the teachers, the assistant principal, and the school psychologist. After the talk, a number of students gathered around to ask me further questions. Then the assistant principal joined in and asked some question of a boy who looked to be about eleven. Halfway through his answer, the school psychologist walked over and started talking to the assistant principal—who turned her back on the boy and left him standing there in midsentence. Astonished, he looked at me and spread his arms, as if to say, “What can you do when you deal with grown-ups? They still don’t get it.” I smiled in understanding and spread my arms, copying his gesture, as if to say, “Yeah, what can you do?” If this assistant principal had been talking to an adult rather than a child and her colleague had interrupted as he did, without a word of apology or explanation, and if she had turned her back on the adult speaking, without even an “Excuse me,” they both would have been perceived as flagrantly rude. Except that, since an adult was involved, they almost certainly wouldn’t have done it. Why is discourtesy acceptable if directed against a young person? What message is conveyed? That respect is only appropriate for older people?

  2. Justice in the classroom. Children are extremely sensitive to issues of fairness. If they see the same rules applied consistently to everyone; if, for instance, they see that their teacher has the same attitude and policy whether talking to a boy, a girl, a Caucasian, a black American, a Hispanic, or an Asian—they register the appropriate lesson, they perceive the teacher as having integrity, and their sense of safety and security is enhanced. On the other hand, favoritism (and disfavoritism) poisons a classroom atmosphere. It encourages feelings of isolation and rejection and diminishes children’s sense that this is a world with which they will be able to deal. A teacher cannot help enjoying one student more than another, but professionals know how to manage their feelings. They hold themselves accountable to objective standards of behavior. A child needs the sense that in the classroom, justice will prevail. A teacher who does not understand this can turn an eight-year-old into a cynic who no longer cares to give his or her best.

  3. Self-appreciation. When teachers help a child feel visible by offering appropriate feedback, they encourage self-awareness. When they offer not judgments but descriptions of what they see, they help the child to see him or herself. When they draw attention to a child’s strengths, they encourage self-appreciation.

  However, teachers often tend to concentrate not on strengths but on weaknesses. Johnny is good at English but poor in math, so the whole focus is put on math. Since math does have to be learned, this is understandable, but it is a mistake nonetheless. The mistake is not that the teacher says math needs more attention—it does; the mistake is that the teacher treats this as more important than Johnny’s skill in English. If Johnny is good in English, that is a reason to encourage him to do more writing and reading, not less. Teachers tend to call parents when a child is doing poorly. There is reason to believe that calling them when the child is doing well could be more productive; in the latter case one can still address negatives but not treat them as the most important element in the situation. Help Johnny to be aware of and appreciate his assets. They may indicate where his passion lies and point the way to his future.

  And even when dealing with weaknesses, a teacher can focus on Johnny’s deficiency in ways that hurt self-esteem: “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you can’t learn such-and-such—what’s the matter with you?” Or the teacher can inspire him to extend his mastery to a new field, so that working on math becomes self-esteem building—“You stick with it, even though it’s tough.” The focus should remain on the positive.

  Sometimes a child is not fully aware of his or her assets. It is the teacher’s job to facilitate that awareness. This has nothing to do with phony compliments. Every child does some things right. Every child has some assets. They must be found, identified, and nurtured. A teacher should be a prospector, looking for gold. Try to think back to what it would have been like to be in a class where the teacher felt there was no more urgent task than to discover the good in you—your strengths and virtues—and to help you become more aware of them. Would that have inspired the best in you? Would that be an environment in which you were motivated to grow and learn?

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  A teacher should be a prospector, looking for gold.

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  4. Attention. Every child needs attention, and some children need more attention than others. There is one kind of student who is often ignored. This is the student who does his or her work extremely well but who is shy, retiring, and very silent in class. A teacher needs to make an extra effort to bring this child out. This might be accomplished by asking, as often as necessary, “Clara, what’s your opinion?” Or, “What do you think about that, Charley?” Sometimes it is useful to ask such a child to help some other student who is having difficulties with the work, so that the child has an opportunity to “come out” and experience being effective with another person. (The point is not altruism; the point is that the child gets to experience being socially competent. “Peer facilitation,” observes educator Kenneth Miller, “is one of the best things happening in schools today.”7 Sometimes it is useful to ask the shy student to stay for a few minutes after class to form more of a personal connection—to send the signal that he or she is noticed and cared
about.

  This is a signal that every student needs and deserves. Above all, what is needed is the message that what the child thinks and feels matters. The tragedy for many children is when year after year they do not get this message from adults, at some point what they think and feel matters less to themselves. The problem is compounded when children who treat themselves as if they did not matter are praised for their “unselfishness.”

  5. Discipline. In every classroom there are rules that must be respected if learning is to progress and tasks are to be accomplished. Rules can be imposed, by dint of the teacher’s power, or they can be explained in such a way as to engage the mind and understanding of the student. Jane Bluestein writes:

  When we ask our students to do something, we usually have a better reason than because I said so. Telling them the real, logical, and intrinsic reason for a limit or a rule—so the markers do not dry out, so that we do not disturb anyone on our way down the hall, so that no one trips and falls—builds commitment and cooperation even from rebellious students.8

  A teacher can think about rules in one of two ways. She or he can wonder: How can I make students do what needs to be done? Or: How can I inspire students to want to do what needs to be done? The first orientation is necessarily adversarial and at best achieves obedience while encouraging dependency. The second orientation is benevolent and achieves cooperation, while encouraging self-responsibility. The first approach threatens pain. The second offers values—and power, too. Which approach a teachers feels more comfortable with has a good deal to do with his or her sense of efficacy as a person.

  Sometimes a teacher may feel that there is no choice but to motivate by a student’s desire to avoid a negative rather than to gain a positive. Perhaps so. But as an exclusive or dominant policy it is psychologically disempowering. It makes escape from pain more important than experiencing joy—which leads to self-contraction (the contraction of thought and feeling) rather than self-expression and self-development.

  In Teacher Effectiveness Training, Tom Gordon proposes that students participate in the process of rule setting—that they be invited to think through what an effective classroom requires—and this has the advantage not only of stimulating superior cooperation but also of fostering greater autonomy.

  “The essence of discipline,” writes Haim Ginott in Teacher and Child, “is finding effective alternatives to punishment.” His chapter on discipline in this book is outstanding in the strategies he offers for motivating students in ways that enhance rather than diminish self-esteem.

  Discipline problems often result when children come to school with negative expectations concerning the behavior of adults based on their experiences at home. Without conscious awareness of their motives, they may be disruptive or hostile in class to evoke the kind of punishment they are used to; they may provoke anger because anger is what they “know” is in store for them. The challenge to a teacher is not to be “hooked” by this strategy and fulfill the student’s worst expectations. It can be difficult to preserve respect and compassion when dealing with such students, but teachers wise and mature enough to do so can have an extraordinary impact.

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  Compassion and respect do not imply lack of firmness.

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  An examination of the strategies of maintaining classroom discipline is not my purpose here. An excellent treatment of that issue, apart from the Ginott book, may be found in Jane Bluestein’s 21st Century Discipline. Bluestein displays great ingenuity in illustrating how teachers can maintain discipline while strengthening the autonomy of the student.

  She addresses, for instance, the well-known but often ignored principle that misconduct is better corrected by allowing a student to experience its logical consequences than by punishment. When a class was sluggish and uncooperative—repeatedly—about completing a lesson, she announced that class would not be dismissed for lunch until the lesson was completed. By the time the students got to the lunchroom the food was cold and much of it was gone. Next day, every lesson was completed and every desk was neatly cleared two minutes before dismissal time. “I’m still amazed that they all learned to tell time overnight.” She writes:

  In … authority relationships, misconduct is an invitation for the teacher to exercise power and control. Our immediate response, in this type of arrangement, is How can I teach him or her a lesson? In a 21st-century classroom, the lessons to be learned from one’s misconduct come from the consequences of this misconduct, not the power of the teacher…. In the example [of the sluggish class], the students missed lunch because of a poor choice they had made, not as a punishment for misbehaving. As soon as the students got themselves ready on time, there was no reason for the negative consequence (delaying lunch) to continue.

  One last word on this subject. If low self-esteem can impel some teachers to rigid, punitive, even sadistic behavior, it can impel others to the kind of mushy “permissiveness” that signals a complete absence of authority—with classroom anarchy as the result. Compassion and respect do not imply lack of firmness. A capitulation to disruptive elements in the class means abdication of the teacher’s responsibilities. Competent teachers understand the need for standards of acceptable behavior. But they also understand that toughness need not and should not entail insults or responses aimed at demeaning anyone’s sense of personal value. One of the characteristics of a superior teacher is mastery of this challenge.

  To achieve the results they want, teachers sometimes have to exercise imagination. Problems cannot be reduced to a list of formula strategies that will fit every occasion. One teacher I know solved a classroom problem by gravely asking the biggest, noisiest boy in the class, when they were alone, if he could help her by exercising his natural leadership abilities to persuade some of the others to be more orderly. The boy looked a bit disoriented, evidently not knowing how to answer; but peacefulness quickly prevailed, and the boy responsible felt proud of himself.

  Understanding Emotions

  If a proper education has to include an understanding of thinking, it also has to include an understanding of feelings.

  Unfortunately, many parents implicitly teach children to repress their feelings and emotions—or those which parents find disturbing. “Stop crying or I’ll really give you something to cry about!” “Don’t you dare get angry!” “Don’t be afraid! Do you want people to think you’re a sissy?” “No decent girl has such feelings!” “Don’t be so excited! What’s the matter with you?”

  Emotionally remote and inhibited parents tend to produce emotionally remote and inhibited children. This is accomplished not only through their overt communications but also by their own behavior, which signals to a child what is “proper,” “appropriate,” “socially acceptable.”

  Further, parents who accept certain teachings of religion are likely to convey the unfortunate notion that there are such things as “evil thoughts” or “evil emotions.” “It’s a sin to feel that!” The child may learn moral terror of his or her inner life.

  An emotion is both a mental and a physical event. It is an automatic psychological response, involving both mental and physiological features, to our subconscious appraisal of what we perceive as beneficial or harmful to ourself.* Emotions reflect the perceiver’s value response to different aspects of reality: “for me or against me,” “good for me or harmful,” “to be pursued or to be avoided,” and so forth. A discussion of the psychology of emotions may be found in The Disowned Self.

  To cease to know what we feel is to cease to experience what things mean to us. This unconsciousnesş is often actively encouraged in children. A child may be led to believe that emotions are potentially dangerous, that sometimes it is necessary to deny them, to make oneself unaware of them. The child can learn to disown certain emotions and cease to experience them consciously. On the psychological level, a child deflects awareness, thereby ceasing to recognize or acknowledge certain feelings. On the physical level, a child inhibits breathing, ten
ses his or her body, induces muscular tensions, and blocks the free flow of feelings, thereby inducing a partial state of numbness.

  I do not wish to imply that parents are the only source of childhood repression. They are not. Children can learn on their own to protect their equilibrium by disowning certain of their feelings, as I discuss in Honoring the Self. However, it is undeniable that too many parents encourage the practice of emotional repression by making it a tacit condition of their approval.

  As the child grows, he or she may slash away more and more feelings, more and more parts of the self, in order to be accepted, loved, and not abandoned. The child may practice self-repudiation as a survival strategy. He or she cannot be expected to understand the unfortunate long-range consequences.

  A teacher is in a position to teach children a rational respect for feelings coupled with an awareness that one can accept a feeling without having to be ruled by it.

  We can learn to own when we are afraid, and accept it, and (for instance) still go to the dentist when it is necessary to do so. We can learn to admit when we are angry, and talk about it, and not resort to fists. We can learn to recognize when we hurt, and own the feeling, and not put on a phony act of indifference. We can learn to witness our feelings of impatience and excitement, and breathe into them, and yet not go out to play until we have finished our homework. We can learn to recognize our sexual feelings, and accept them, and not be controlled by them in self-destructive ways. We can learn to recognize and accept our emotions without losing our minds. We can learn to wonder: What might my feelings be trying to tell me? What might I need to consider or think about?