by J. Thorn
A technique that has become standard operating procedure in many schools is “positive reinforcement.” It attempts to build Self-Esteem through the constant and eternal praise of every aspect of a child’s existence.
“Way to wipe your ass, Johnny. Good work on that!”
It seems innocent enough until you recognize that students are being commended on things they are supposed to be doing. It goes without saying that everyone loves a compliment. Recognition from others is a big motivator in our behavior. But imagine walking through your day and having your boss compliment you on the fact that you turned the water off at the sink in the break room, or recognize how well you dialed your phone, or give you public recognition for showing up to a staff meeting on time. It might seem wonderful at first, although a bit odd. If this happened constantly, the compliments and praise would lose the intended effect. This is what is happening in schools. Children garner praise and commendations for walking in the halls, using conversational tones, or doing their homework. If a child usually throws feces while screaming curse words at others as he stumbles through the school, then it would make sense to praise him when he does it like a human being. But if students come to expect praise for doing what they are supposed to do, it loses all value.
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The Columbine tragedy reflects the sadness and disconnect of raising children in modern America, and reference to it must be made with care. It is another example of the perception of the general public on the role Self-Esteem plays in the education of children.
On April 20, 1999, two teenagers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado, and opened fire on teachers and classmates alike. They killed twelve students, one teacher, and injured twenty-one others before committing suicide.
Shortly after the massacre and for years following it, stories emerged. Dylan and Eric were loners. Kids routinely picked on them. They listened to music by Marilyn Manson and Rammstein that provoked their violent behavior. The boys became outcasts, leading to low Self-Esteem, which ultimately pushed them to the edge.
One cannot deny the effect that multiple factors can have on the mind of a teenage boy, especially since most boys at that age feel they are invincible. However, the external factors became the scapegoat. Teachers, counselors, and school psychologists all pointed to the violent videogames, movies, and “goth” music as the cause of this (kids roll their eyes whenever an adult uses the term “goth” as most over the age of twenty-five have no clue what constitutes “goth”).
Somehow I knew that Dee Snyder’s Congressional testimony in 1985 would be forgotten. How one can deny the wisdom of the Twisted Sister is beyond me. The point is that outsider music or violent videogames are easy to blame. They sit as big, fat targets for the professionals to use as triggers for events such as these, even though the majority of kids who listen to this music or play these games do not open fire with machine guns on their classmates. (99.997 percent. I made that up, but it sounds right.) I still listen to this music, and I am completely normal (not really).
If you take this one step further, the low Self-Esteem theory slides like Ricky Henderson into second base, safely under the throw. Because these kids listened to music that others found appalling, because they watched violent movies, and because they played violent videogames, their peers ridiculed them. The “normal” kids teased Dylan and Eric about their “outsider” beliefs, which lowered their Self-Esteem. Once they had low Self-Esteem, they took out this aggression by killing thirteen people.
Sounds reasonable, but even Matlock can see through this. Consider this: An interesting angle to the sadness is the fact that Harris was prescribed Luvox and had it in his system at the time of the attack. This was after he took Zoloft and complained of some of the same side effects documented years later, such as suicidal and violent thoughts.
The boys amassed an arsenal of weapons in their bedrooms, as many as ninety-nine explosive devices, sawed-off twelve-gauge shotguns, and multiple nine-millimeter handguns. And now we get to the crux of it all.
Were these boys orphans? How did they manage to keep a bunker of explosives and semi-automatic weapons in their bedrooms? When I was fourteen, I thought I had a good hiding place for my Hustler magazine until my parents told me my younger brother had found it. Gulp.
I wonder if a lack of parenting had anything to do with the wayward paths of these tormented young souls? Placing blame on the parents would be almost as bad as saying low Self-Esteem caused this. But doesn’t it seem more plausible? These were middle-class, white, suburban teenagers. Like Chris Rock joked, their biggest worry is that they “had to drive a Nova.”
It becomes very easy to cite low Self-Esteem, “goth” music, violent movies, and videogames as the reason for wasted youth. But if you dig a little deeper, you realize that a lot of teenagers deal with these and do not turn to deadly violence as an outlet.
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The Self-Esteem movement even has its clutches in recess. That’s right, the last bastion of free play and creative growth for kids. Several schools in Wyoming and Washington have banned tag at recess. Tag. In the city of Attleboro, school administrators banned dodgeball, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous. Modified versions now include softer balls and ways for children to reenter the action.
An administrator at one school became very concerned that students picked their own teams during recess. They used the “hand over hand on the baseball bat” method, which most of you probably remember from your own childhoods. This resulted in a child being picked last. Oh, the horror. Hypersensitive school psychologists rush in to save children from the horrible experience of being excluded (they were most likely bullied as kids). How could we be so cruel as to allow this to happen?
It is all revisionist history. Proponents of creating Self-Esteem will point to “childhood traumas” as justification for not allowing kids to play tag or dodgeball, or to pick teams. The reality is that adults’ recollections are colored through the lens of low Self-Esteem. I am not suggesting that anyone likes to be excluded or picked last. It sucks. However, it is something children need to learn how to deal with, and if they are constantly bubble-wrapped by adults looking to socially engineer the playground, they will never develop those skills.
Ever been standing in a line at a club and have the bouncer turn you away? Ever been turned down for that promotion at the office? Every chased the girl of your dreams only to have her spit in your face, slap you, and employ a restraining order (me neither)? The Buddha said that life is disappointment, get used to it. Scientists did a study that showed that people hardly ever get what they want, but they get what they need (Dr. Jagger and Dr. Richards, 1969).
I feel the need to quantify this so that I’m not brought up on charges or have my children turned over to Social Services. I am not advocating the deliberate and constructed use of exclusivity as a device to teach children how to deal with disappointment. We need to strive to make sure this does not happen in a formal classroom setting or other organized activity. But when it comes to kids organizing themselves, such as during recess, we need to let them be.
I always hear stories from adults who claim to remember being picked last as a kid and how they still suffer from that. It usually comes from assholes that people still shun. Go figure.
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“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me."
Remember when Al Franken was funny? Laughing at Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley is dangerous if you are an educator. Play a clip at a faculty meeting, and you will see people squirm.
This is Self-Esteem at its most transparent. It became obvious to Franken in the early 1980s how easy this was to lampoon, and yet we still deal with the aftermath today.
Television parodies are nothing new, and people find them funny because they contain two thirds more truthiness than traditional comedy sketches (please do not sue me, Stephen Colbert). Stuart made fun of our twelve-step
programs. But if you peel it back a layer, you will find that those programs flourished on the concept of restoring Self-Esteem. When Smalley states, “I am a worthy human being,” he does so on a full, Esteeming cup of Selfness.
Self-Esteem develops. It is not given. Developing anything requires work, work that will not always give positive results. Being given something is passive and dependent on the giver for the quality of the gift. Self-Esteem is fostered by a sense of purpose within one’s self, a drive to accomplish. That does not mean immediate success, but it does mean a persistence to move forward. This is where the Self-Esteem movement comes up short. If someone can lower your Self-Esteem, you are dependent on them, and it cheapens the Esteem gained by those that do so through hard work.
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In 1984 I went on vacation with my family to Ocean City, Maryland. For a kid growing up in a working-class suburb of Pittsburgh, OC might as well have been the white sands of the Caribbean. We felt the boardwalk was the epicenter of pop culture. Every third shop sold the newest t-shirts, each one trying to outdo the next with the hippest of the new.
A young Joe Elliot, lead singer of Def Leppard, set the trends for gangly, pimply, preteen boys of the 1980s. I look back at pictures from that trip and giggle at my sleeveless Union Jack shirt, black parachute pants, coiffed hairdo, and the red bandana around my neck like a cowboy of the Old West.
I strutted the boardwalk, forcing my younger brother to walk three paces behind so as not to detract from my cool factor. Young girls sighed and squealed as I walked by, and I had to fend off quite a few tossed bras. (I’m not making this up, totally true.) At thirteen and looking like the deranged Smurf version of Joe Elliot, I thought I was the shit.
During the course of that week, I pretended not to hear various comments about my attire, my hair, and my acne. Nowadays, that would have been a vicious attack on my Self-Esteem. It should have left me huddled in a corner, blowing snots into the red bandana, and thinking I was “Coming Under Fire.”
Why didn’t it happen? Partly because I didn’t give a fuck what people thought of me. I still don’t. But it did not put the slightest crack into my Self-Esteem, because it had nothing to do with my ability to succeed. Words can hurt, and we should never permit children to hurt one another intentionally. However, hurt feelings do not leach Self-Esteem and put you on the couch twenty years later.
I passed the “New Wave” kids on the boardwalk, decked out in all black and mascara, looking like sad Robert Smith clones. The fans of that music struck me as so pathetic. They lacked Self-Esteem, and I remember thinking the concept was stupid.
Smells Like School Spirit
My brother walked up to the casket and placed an official Terrible Towel next to my grandfather.
“Hey, check it out,” he said.
I took two steps towards the coffin and could see the bright golden cloth next to a Bible and a folded American flag. My mother walked up behind us, wiping the tears from her eyes as she looked lovingly upon her dead father.
“That’s so sweet. It’s what he would have wanted.”
For the next two viewings, family members, friends, clergy, and others paid their last respects to Andrew Rankinov, honoring his devotion to the church, his service to his country, and his unwavering support of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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Pittsburgh began as a trading outpost at the edge of the sixteenth-century frontier. A few wild explorers established hunting camps that would later turn into forts in the hilly terrain of the Ohio valley. George Washington fought Revolutionary War battles on the banks of the three rivers, and as the West expanded, Pittsburgh became a strategic trading town. It sits on the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers that flow together to form the Ohio River, a major tributary feeding the Mississippi (as stated on every NFL broadcast done from Pittsburgh. Also seen on every broadcast are the Duquesne Incline cars going up Mount Washington, one labeled “De” and the other labeled “fense”).
In the heart of the Rust Belt, manufacturing took hold in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as names like Morgan, Carnegie, Frick, and Mellon made fortunes in the soot-blackened mills on the banks of the rivers. The early twentieth century marked the economic apex of the tenacious city. Steel manufacturing became the predominant driver of the economy, and Pittsburgh cranked out steel from its Homestead Works that can be found in skyscrapers and megastructures worldwide, including the Empire State Building.
Around this time, in the 1930s, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants by the name of Art Rooney won twenty-five hundred dollars at the racetrack and used it to pay the required National Football League entrance fee for a club he named the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team became the Steelers and represented the heart and soul of the city. For decades the team struggled to win even a few games and did not enjoy sustained success until the 1970s, when they won four Super Bowls and established what can now be called a dynasty.
The team does not just play in Pittsburgh, it is Pittsburgh. The players wear black, the color of the working man (at least by Johnny Cash’s definition). The name is taken from the product that built the city and, some would argue, the modern world. The team emblem, which was introduced in 1962, is based on the “steel mark” containing three astroids. The original meanings behind the astroids were, “Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure, and widens your world.” Later the colors came to represent the ingredients used in the steel-making process, which were yellow for coal, red for iron ore, and blue for scrap steel.
In the 1980s the steel industry died, and the city found itself without an identity (including the streets of Homestead, which resemble Kabul more than Kabul does). Many communities that sprang up around the mills during the boom died, leaving nothing but hulking masses of urban decay. Trees and greenery returned over the decades, as did a resurgence in the local economy centered on the medical industry. When I was a young boy, my grandfather swept his above-ground pool every day, as the soot from the mills floated up the hills to Munhall, leaving a fine layer of black dust on everything.
Through all of the proverbial rough times, competition from Japan’s steel industry, and the overall decline of the Rust Belt as the leader in domestic manufacturing, the city clung to its beloved Steelers. (Cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit did not fare much better. In fact, Pittsburgh seems to be the city of these four that has weathered the changes the best.)
Prior to 1970, the Steelers played in one playoff game in twenty-five years. I was three when the Steelers won their first Super Bowl, and by the time I turned nine they had an unprecedented four rings. With six world titles, the Steelers are the envy of fans who are not citizens of the Steelers Nation. Pittsburgh has won more Super Bowl titles (six), won more AFC Championship Games (eight) and hosted more conference championship games (eleven) than any other AFC or NFC team. They have played in more AFC conference championship games than any other team and are tied with the Dallas Cowboys with fifteen championship game appearances in either the NFC or AFC contests. With the exception of the 1960s, which featured only three Super Bowls, the Steelers have appeared in at least one Super Bowl in every decade of the contest.
Folks talk about “America’s Team,” the Cowboys, as being the most recognized professional sports franchise in the world. Sportscasters like to write stories on the dedication of the Cheeseheads in Green Bay.
This all pales in comparison to the role the Steelers play in the city of Pittsburgh. The fans and the citizens are the Steelers. When the team loses, they lose.
And this is what makes everyone in that city completely nuts. Forget the fact that very few professional athletes play for their home team, or that they even live there. Forget that football is a game. When babies are born in Pittsburgh, the infants are wrapped in Terrible Towels and photographed in the nursery. At one wedding I attended (my own), the men in the bridal party whipped out their Terrible Towels and waved them inside the church like it was the fourth down. In fact, E
SPN did a story in 2008 on which NFL city had the best fans. Pittsburgh, without a doubt. The current home-game sellout streak for the Steelers is well over three hundred games. There are forty thousand people on the season ticket waiting list, which translates to fourteen years until you get a chance to buy them. People have been known to will seats to their children.
My dad used to take the AARP- (Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons) sponsored trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland for the annual beat-down of the team hailing from the Mistake on the Lake. Much has been made of this so-called rivalry. While the stats may say the win-loss record is close, Pittsburgh has dominated Cleveland for decades. In fact, up until the Browns’ win in late 2009, they had not beaten the Steelers in six years. Steelers fans find it hard to take the biannual games seriously.
In the 1980s it was not uncommon for the Pittsburgh AARP bus to need a police escort back to the turnpike that separates the two cities by about ninety miles. My dad told me stories of rabid Browns fans throwing bricks through the windows of the bus at senior citizens who happened to be Steelers fans. To be fair, the same types of stories exist for Clevelanders who made the trip to Three Rivers Stadium.
Pittsburghers would die for the Steelers. Some, like my grandfather, take a piece of the team to the grave, as well.
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I hate country music. I love the Dixie Chicks. I have no problem making the distinction. Unlike the chest-thumping antics of jackholes like Toby Keith, the Chicks are true patriots. The dust-up with Dubya almost cost the ladies their careers, their sanity, and their lives, but they did not waver in their disdain for the preemptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The notion of unquestioned, undying loyalty to a cause, country, or team is not new. (You did just read the section on the Pittsburgh Steelers, right?) In fact, Emma Goldman wrote a controversial essay on patriotism at the time President Woodrow Wilson started to ramp up the war machine in 1917. (Wilson won the election in 1916 with the slogan, “He kept us out of the war.”) From Goldman’s essay, “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”:
