Crawler on NWCN: "Study finds increasing narcissism and self-centeredness...

[Union Thug]

...among college students."

Wow, big surprise. Welcome to the inevitable outcome of the greed is good, two for me/none for you, market(ing) driven economy. We should all be proud.

For those outside the Pacific Northwest: NWCN=Northwest Cable News

[cmd]

1. Um, I remember when this happened

I had been teaching kindergarten for many years. Increasing self-esteem became such a big issue with parents that
they complained when I wouldn't draw their child a star on their papers for less than good work. One mom brought in
sheets and sheets of stickers so that I could give every child a sticker. She didn't understand that rewarding mistakes
only reinforces mistakes.

[Union Thug]

2. Reinforcing mistakes...it went straight from Kindergarten to the 2004 elections.

Accusations of fraud notwithstanding.

Now gimmee my gold star, dammit!

[Skidmore]

5. Learning to fail and regroup is one of the most important life skills

a child can learn, followed closely by learning to know your limits and when to say no.

Negative skills? Important ones.

[cspanlovr]

3. I can't bother to read this now...

I'm contemplating my navel!

[The2ndWheel]

4. In an increasingly distant

specialized, and fast paced society, what else would happen?

[all.of.me]

6. the 'leader' of the country has set such a fine example...

sad how many kids need a male role model. more sad they are choosing the wrong one!

[Mind_your_head]

7. I ran across this FASCINATING article the other day about 'Praise'

I was thinking of printing it out and leaving it in the teacher's lounge over at my kid's school. Anyway, here it is. Hope you enjoy!

<snip>
How Not to Talk to Your Kids
The Inverse Power of Praise.
By Po Bronson

Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent.

But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

<snip>

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.

For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.
<snip>

Much more: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

[riverdeep]

12. Mind you head: great article!

Very compelling. I started thinking differently about failure when I read a book called "Information Anxiety" by Richard Wurman. It has a section on failure that says failure is absolutely neccesary to learning -that we learn in a zigzag way, taking a step, seeing it work, trying another, getting blocked, a continuous pattern of sending and receiving stimuli. We have unfortunately, for a long time-not just since the 60's or something-treated the posture of making a mistake as the worst thing imaginable. Imagine, if you can, a debate that wasn't set up like a sporting event, but where the person who wins learned the most!


It's also why the dufus-in-chief has officially never made a mistake.

[Zorra]

8. Self-centered narcissists make rabid consumers. nt

[KittyWampus]

10. People with a sucking void in the core of their being make rabid consumers.

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. And they don't give a whit abt politics at any level

[Strawman]

9. Was at a college sports event recently

And some little twit drunk rich kid started acting out and going off on some guy about how his dad could "buy his ass." "My dad shits on you." The event was all about his own self-gratification. Others were just there to be used as props and "shit on" for this kid's consumptive satisfaction. There was no recognition that others deserved respect.

It's all about getting/being rich, doing and consuming whatever the hell you want and shitting on others rather than being shat upon. I'm hopeful that more people are getting sick of it.

[Reverend_Smitty]

13. I think it's more of a class based thing rather than a generational one...

For the most part you are going to encounter a lot of self-gratifying behavior on a college campus. I mean there's a reason why the old saying "There's a time and place for everything, and that place is college" was made up. In your late teens and early 20's I think is the best time in your life to focus on yourself and it makes sense why there is a higher percentage of narcissism. It's your first taste of freedom and you generally have few responsibilities...with that said, you can't lose your humanity.

Also I think with rising tuition costs these days, middle and lower class students are finding it harder to attend college so I think we are finding more of a class gap in this country's universities. and certainly we can see what happens upper class twits give their precious babies everything they want.

[Strawman]

15. Yeah. I agree. Maybe I wouldn't use the word generational

But I do wonder if there isn't a cultural element in the mix. Look at some of the celebrities that came into fashion this decade: spoliled brats like Paris Hilton, rich old jerks like Donald Trump...
All these rich assholes we have to go into hock emulating or advertising tells us we're garbage.

[Reverend_Smitty]

16. it's funny how culture evolves

I guess evolve is not really a good word...more like thrust upon us. I'm almost 23, and know many people my own age, yet not one person I know wants to emulate or even likes Trump or Hilton. Yet they are being paraded all over the media. It makes you wonder who creates our culture?

[peekaloo]

11. I scoured this article twice and found nothing about ME!

*harumph*

[Odin2005]

17. This is the result of the obsession with kids' "self esteem"

My generation is a bunch of coddled ninnies.