Okay readers, how about a little praise for my last post on praise? Don’t I get a little credit? A medal? Something to make me feel good about myself?
The trend toward constant praise and rewards for everyday work was the most-talked-about subject on the Well blog last week, following my post “Are Kids Getting Too Much Praise?” Readers shared several examples of over-praising and under-criticizing in schools.
We actually had a local school system consider not recognizing a valedictorian at graduation, for fear of damaging the self-esteem of the rest of the class by singling one student out.
— Posted by ag
A lot of schools in our state actually never use the word “fail,” only the term “deferred success.” I know someone whose son got all F’s in his freshman year of high school and was passed on to be a sophomore anyway. No child left behind?
— Posted by Beth
How about the fact that my friend had to go out and buy purple pens, because she isn’t allowed to mark her students’ papers with red anymore - it’s too mean of a color. Purple is softer.
— Posted by mb
I shuddered at work yesterday when my friend recounted how his 9-year-old son’s last place sports team all got “participation trophies” after their last game.
— Posted by jr
Readers commented that kids are no longer told they are wrong. Instead, teachers must tell them, “There’s a better answer.’’ But several readers noted that not allowing kids to make mistakes and giving them false rewards only ends up hurting them.
When a bridge collapses or a space shuttle cracks apart - these are wrong answers. Kids are better off knowing that some answers just aren’t right.
— Posted by ETF
As a college teacher, I see the negative effects of excessive praise in many of my students. They don’t have a sense of their strengths (even if they are sometimes big talkers), which they can only really develop by testing themselves….True self-esteem comes from testing one’s limits and overcoming obstacles, not from feeling good all the time. The “self-esteem movement” is one of the biggest mistakes we have made in modern education.
— Posted by Annette
As a teacher, I’ve been battling this with parents for years. Parents are big on the self-esteem bandwagon and wish that their children would never feel any discomfort when it comes to learning and growth. They want me to praise their children all of the time. Unfortunately, praise isn’t always called for. Shaming isn’t either, but certainly self-reflection is. How can children learn if we’re constantly telling them that they’re OK when things are not OK?
— Posted by J
However, some parents noted there is a fine line between praising too much and not praising enough.
Today our son is in a gifted enrichment program at his school. Back in the 70’s, he would have been tossed into the remedial room with “the dumb kids.” Let’s not turn back to the days of abusing kids just because they don’t all learn the same way.
— Posted by Lisa
Growing up with older brothers who were very critical of my abilities, I have to say praise would have been helpful in encouraging me to develop talent in the things I tried my hand at as a child. As a language teacher in Japan, I saw many students ashamed of themselves because they didn’t think they were good enough.
— Posted by Michael Rowley
The need for constant affirmation is not just a problem in schools, as several readers recounted examples of over-praising in the workplace.
I recently refused to participate in a workplace meeting to discuss ways to encourage people to come to work and how to make employees feel appreciated. People wanted more recognition for ordinary tasks like drafting letters and good attendance awards. Are we in kindergarten? Come on people! Isn’t that why you get a paycheck?
Posted by C. Hamilton
Our society rewards the big talkers, the confident swagger of a man or woman who think they are 9 feet tall.
— Posted by j.a.g.
And I’m giving the final word to a reader who notes that kids don’t have to be great at everything.
What happened to all the average kids? What’s wrong with being a ten-year-old who plays violin like a ten-year-old? There is value in just being okay at something, enjoying it anyway, and learning from one’s mistakes.
— Posted by sz
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11 Comments
praise to Tara for giving us a place.
— Annie S.Thank you Tara, for bringing up this topic and the time to write about it in a way that needs to be discussed. I enjoyed reading the comments of others. While reading them I couldn’t help but wonder…20 years from now what are they going to be saying about over praising? How it adversely affected millions of American children and the job market???
I know someone who is elderly now, he was always told how great he was, how smart he was, how he never did a thing wrong, was the best businessman, and so forth. This man, who I’ve known for the past 25 years now, is now in his 80’s.
He is an absolute terror when anyone says anything that contradicts a choice or reasoning he has made. He is not open to hearing or seeing anyones actions that contradict his own. I can’t help but feel this kind of behavior on his part is a direct result of “over praising.”
After seeing the effects of this I cannot help but think… we should be extremely mindful of not over-doing or under-doing praise as each extreme has its pit-falls. If we’re over doing the praising it may come back to bite us in the behinds when we’re older - remember, our kids will be the ones taking care of us when we are elderly.
Consider this, if our kids are taking care of us and we don’t like jam on our toast but “they” think we do like it, that will make them wrong. Will we be seeing 50 and 60 year old care givers storming out of the house because they were wrong? Or, are we prepared to suck it up?
We each make the beds we lay in.
— Evelyn VincentThe topic is excellent. it needed to be discussed and subsequently commented. Its nice to praise our kids for their strenghts and ablities. At the same time they are desired to be critised for their shortcomings and weaknesses.They should be guided to be punctual in their lessons and work for the future that is waitng for them…………
— Subhash JoshiWhat is needed is a sense of balance and reality. We rightfully reject the notion that kids who fail are outright failures and we as a society have seen too many of them cast aside. We want to build them up. At the same time, we think that’s done by dumbing them down. That notion has crept into the school population at large.
All children need to be challenged, and knowing success from failure is a crucial part of that. Non-letter grade report cards, non-point-scoring soccer games, non-failure … all of these are misguided after kindergarten, and I might be convinced to say they’re misguided at any age.
Thanks for bringing this discussion to the forefront. I’m guessing you’ll help empower a lot of teachers who already know this, but who feel pressure from parents and PTA groups to act otherwise. And vice versa.
— Janet VThere’s a superb New Yorker magazine single-panel cartoon from at least a decade ago addressing the over-praise problem. The cartoon shows a short-order cook behind the counter, appearing slovenly and unkempt, slumping against the wall in an ugly and irresponsible manner. The caption is the phrase of one onlooker, a mid-level manager, perhaps, saying to another: “The phrase ‘Well done!’ lulled him into complacency.”
— Fiona BaylyAs an educator who has studied and written on this issue, let me offer some practical advice:
Kids need more feedback, not endless praise or blame. Feedback describes what you did or did not do; it has no value judgment; it is useful info. Feedback gets you better; praise and blame do not. Praise is fine IF you add the descriptive feedback - for example: Jon, that was a good at-bat. You kept your shoulder in, you kept your head low, and you (therefore) hit the ball much harder - feel the difference? Criticism is fine, too, if it educates: Jon, that was poorly done: when we agree to do a job it means finishing it. You did not wash any of the pots and pans. Yes, those are part of the dishes, too, even though they are not ‘dishes’.
The key, you see, is not to emphasize the praise or blame language - think of that as just a grace note set-up for the instruction. (If you hear yourself saying Good job! immediately think: how can I describe to him or her what about it was good?)
A few other comments. Trophies for showing up as a 9-year-old is OK by me - 9 year olds do not understand the game and often do not even know the score (I am a longtime LL coach). And life is, in part, about showing up and being engaged - so it is ok to praise it as long as it doesn’t trump the idea that competent performance plus showing up is more desirable.
Extrinsic rewards are not inherently harmful, only harmful if poorly used. All of us want to be paid for our work - we would hardly think it right to work for free, because we ’should’. So, paying kid for chores and praising the effort that went into earning the money is surely a good thing. The key lesson is that you don’t get paid as much if the work done was not up to standard.
In my experience as a parent, educator, and coach the clear lesson is that everyone accepts helpful feedback even if it temporarily hurts. Why? Because it is useful information - it dignifies the performer rather than making them subservient to and intimidated by the giver of praise and blame. It says - here’s the information you need; what you do with it is up to you. More subtly, it says - I am watching you more closely than you might have thought. I take enough interest in you to study what you do. I have always found kids feel this - that the good feedback giver is someone whom they respect a lot, no matter how direct or blunt the info.
— hazbinI think the topic is a good one, which needs to be addressed. However, I could not but be disturbed by the narrowness of the focus of the article. It compared only scholastic achievement to praise. But did anyone look at what the rates of depression, self-mutilation and suicide are in those countries? It’s possible that we are sacrificing a level of scholastic achievment in order to gain more balanced individuals, and in order to meet long-term emotional needs. I work with children, and I know that they need both honesty and praise in their everyday interactions. I am also a collge student at a major university, which has a very heavy emphasis on academic success. There are a lot of students here who didn’t receive lots of praise, who were constantly pushed to do better. And yes, a lot of those students do very well in school, and get high grades. But do you have any idea how unhappy they are? Do you know how many of them take antidepressants, or hurt themselves? It’s a lot. Please, parents and teachers, think about the long-term effects before cutting out self-esteem building from your interections with your children.
— T.H.A.S.On the purple ink question. For many years I used several different colors to write notes to my students in the margins of their papers (one at a time, not multicolored writing). My students always told me that the intimidating thing was not the color of the ink, but the fact that there was lots of writing. Once they realized that the comments were not all critical (in fact, most weren’t, we handled criticism in writing conferences) they wanted red because it is easiest to read against black ink on white paper. As for the topic of too much praise, my personal belief is that teachers need to always tell the truth, but also need to balance that need against what goal students are trying to achieve. In many cases, even with college students, I find that it is important to praise people for attempting to do something that they have never done before, or have tried and failed at in the past. There’s time to work on perfecting the skill later.
— Eugene PistoresePraise does not deliver self-esteem. Self-esteem is a product of a sense of accomplishment. And to carry this one more step…the accomplishment has to be something the person holds in high regard. For example, a child can win a tennis tournament but perhaps the accomplishment came very easily…so the child doesn’t think that much about it. Praise should be saved for a job well done. It should never be used to bolster anything that’s not there. Besides, children can always tell when one’s praise is undeserved. If a child grows up constantly seeking praise, it’s because the sense of accomplishment and therefore self-esteem has never been realized…so basically the child is seeking “attention” …not a happy ending.
— Kathie McKennapraise for praise ….too many go without even a little….Also a strong vote from Ketchikan Alaska
— rv mommsenfor Eugene Pisorese . There is one you can count on to hit a nail on the head.
B ut it is still a tough job. Parents would do well to look for guidance to pinpoint unrealistic characteristics of theirs which will govern their approach to child rearing. The same for conflicting concepts of child rearing between the parents. And, don’t let anyone think that a single parent cannot raise a wonderful child. Just make sure you get proper guidance. Zohar
— Zohar Dee