I just received and gave a cursory glace at the Low Self Esteem article
on FOB. I am skeptical of the results. I do not believe that our
students live lives of failure as the article suggests that some
teachers may believe. In fact I believe that they live lives of
incredible sacrifices, successes, triumphs, and overcoming tremendous
difficulties. However, society portraits them as failures though
different mechanisms, ie, low literacy, poverty, difficulty with
academic environments, domestic violence, lack of employment, blue
collar work, lack of citizenship or residency, racism, poor health, etc.
These are the tools that mainstream society uses to evaluate success or
failure of individuals. 

 

While most of our students are extremely hard working, passionate,
dedicated, excellent family providers, etc., they do not measure
themselves in terms of these, but in terms of the mainstream society
markers. The mainstream society markers have very detrimental effects in
our student self esteem. 

 

We have found that through a lot of motivation, creative writing, and
success in academic pursuits we are able to help students to see
themselves as they truly are instead of the mainstream societal markers
of success. As a result, we see our students,\' self esteem improve. 

 

In a society where the dominant media dictates that success is measured
primarily by wealth, possessions, intellectual entitlements and looks,
the poor, the dispossessed, those without degrees and those who don't
meet the standard look will have poor self esteem. Fortunately, there
are alternatives to the media that can validate people based on other
things. However, the competition against the mainstream media is tough. 

 

Years ago, FOB published an article by Steve Reader that found no
resistance among ABE students contradicting what Quigley and others have
previously founds. This article finds no lack of self esteem among ABE
students. These two articles contradict the obvious. To me, this means
that the testing the statistical analysis, the questions asked, the
understanding of the theory or other elements of the testing instrument
are flawed.    

 

Add to this the fact that self esteem and resistance are very hard to
understand and assess concepts and often unconscious. Asking questions
such as: Do you resist? Or: Do you have a low self-esteem? May not be
accurate ways to assess self-esteem.

 

Opinions, discussion? 

 

Andres 

 

 

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