My last column on "Blaming the Victim" was a
departure from my usual emphasis on improving learning and memory. But it did
set the stage for this current post on the crippling effect of allowing
children to make excuses for underperformance in school.
Most of us know how common it is
for kids to make excuses ("the dog ate my homework" syndrome). When
we adults were young, we also probably made excuses, blaming the textbook, the
teacher, the school, and whatever else could serve to avoid facing the real
causes of the problems.
Why do kids do that? The main
reason is their fragile egos. Confronting personal weakness is especially hard
for kids when they are embedded in an adult culture that inevitably reminds
them that they are relatively powerless kids.
I remember a recent dinner-table
conversation with my competitive 6th grade granddaughter, who was complaining
about a test in which some of the questions were not aligned well with the
instruction, which itself was deemed confusing. I said, "I understand that
others did do better than you on the test. Wasn't everybody facing the same
handicap?" No answer. Then I added, "It doesn't matter who the
teacher is or what instruction you get. If you are not first in the class, it
is your fault." Again, no response.
One approach that parents and
teachers use is to bolster children's egos by praising them richly and often.
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Too much praise makes kids
narcissistic. Anybody who is not aware of the raging narcissism in today's
youngsters must not be around young people very much. The most obvious sign is
the compulsive checking of e-mail and texting, all in an effort by a child to
be at the center of attention.
I and other professors notice
narcissism in college students. In a selective college, most students think
they are "A" students, and because of low standards in secondary
school and grade inflation they are actually told they are A students. If they
don't make As in college, it is somebody else's fault (usually the professor).
Scholars are beginning to address
this growing narcissism. Eddie Brummelman at the University of Amsterdam in the
Netherlands and his colleagues studied 565 children between the ages of 7 to 12.
They picked this age group because most other such studies have been in adults,
and they believed that early adolescence is when children develop narcissistic
traits such as selfishness, self-centeredness and vanity.
Over 18 months, the children and
their parents were given several detailed questionnaires that were designed to
measure narcissistic traits and parental behavior. There was a small but
significant link at each stage between how much parents praised their children
and how narcissistic the children were six months later. Because the effect was
only small, it suggests that other things also make people selfish and self-centered.
I suspect the effect is larger in the U.S.
Maybe school culture is part of
the problem. As in Lake Woebegon, "all kids are above average." For
brighter students, the instructional rigor is so low that these kids get a
false sense of how smart they are and how easy it is to be an "A"
student.
I suspect that another factor is
that students are not taught enough about how to be realistically self-aware.
They may not even know when they are making excuses unless adults call them on
it. Too often, parents side with the student in criticizing a teacher when the
real problem is with the child.
Some of the blame shifting comes
from biology. It is in human nature to claim ownership of things we do that
turn out well, but disown actions that yield negative consequences. Experiments
support this conclusion. The most recent experiments had a primary focus on our
sense of time in association with voluntary actions. The experimental design
was based on prior evidence that the perceived estimate of time lag between
when we do something and when we think we did it is an implicit index of our
sense of ownership. Investigators asked people to press a key, which was
followed a quarter of a second later by negative sounds of fear or disgust,
positive sounds of achievement or amusement, or neutral sounds. The subjects
were then asked to estimate when they had made the action and when they heard
the sound. Timing estimation errors were easily measured by computer. Subjects
sensed a longer time lag between their actions and the consequences when the
outcome (the sound) was negative than when it was positive.
Teaching Kids to Deal with Failure
There is a common denominator to most self-limiting styles
of living. It is a fear of failure. Children express this fear by making
excuses, which has the unintended effect of blocking the path to success.
Excuses may provide immediate relief of anxiety, but it creates a self-limiting
learning style that assures continued underachievement.
Whatever one’s station in life,
one axiom is paramount: for things to get better for you, you have to get
better. This point is well illustrated in an inspiring rags-to-riches success
book by A. J. Williams. He points out that a main reason that people do not
make the changes they need to is that they are afraid of failure. But,
paradoxically, learning from failure is how many people turn their lives around
and become happier. Children, I have noticed, are highly resistant to personal
change, maybe more so than adults. I am dismayed at how often I show children
how to memorize more effectively and they just can't bring themselves to study
in a different way. It is as if they don't believe me enough to even try new
approaches. Or maybe they have convinced themselves they are mediocre and need
the shield of excuses to keep others from detecting their weaknesses.
Louis Armstrong, the famous
trumpeter, told an instructive story about fear when he was a boy. One day when
his mother asked him to go down to the levee to fetch a pail of drinking water,
he came back home with an empty pail. Upon noticing the empty pail, his mother
said, “I told you to bring back a pail of water for us to drink. How come your
pail is empty?” Louis replied, “There’s an alligator there, and I was scared to
death.” His mother then said, “You shouldn’t be afraid. That gator is as afraid
of you as you are of him.” To which Louis answered, “If that’s the case, then
that water ain’t fit to drink.”
If there is an alligator keeping
you away from what you need to do, have faith you will prevail over your
demons. But as long as a child lets fear get in the way, her pail will stay
empty.
Other kinds of fear are also
self-limiting. Many children fear commitment to learning. Commitment exacts an
emotional price requiring dedication, passion, and self-discipline. Children
fear confusion and difficulty. They fear disapproval.
Kids need to put their
under-performance in perspective. Failure and under-achievement are not
permanent. They are not pervasive reflections of inadequacy. Children can
acquire learning skills that lead to success. Unfortunately, schools don't
teach much about learning skills, being focused on teaching to high-stakes
tests.
Kids need to recognize their weakness
and strive to fix them. But to bolster their motivation and general attitude
about school, they need to recognize what they have done well and strive to do
even more of that. Dwelling on under-performance is counter-productive.
The Most Important Thing Kids Need to Learn
Excuse-making prevents a child from developing the attitude
that will best serve them throughout life: a sense of personal efficacy, a
state of perceived control over one's life. I explain this more thoroughly in
my book, "Blame Game, How to Win It." But a summary here will have to
suffice.
How children perceive their
personal power determines how much effort they will expend to control their
lives. If they lack a genuine sense of power, excuse-making applies salve to
their wounded egos. Self-efficacy is not the same as self-esteem. Psychologist,
Albert Bandura, puts it this way: “Perceived self-efficacy is concerned with
judgments of personal capability, whereas self-esteem is concerned with
judgments of self-worth.” Both are important for happiness, but it is perceived
self-efficacy that drives academic achievement. One practical application where
this distinction is apparently not recognized is with school teachers who think
the cure for low achievement in school is to foster self-esteem. Teachers
should emphasize self-efficacy. Children learn self-efficacy from teachers and parents
who enable them to master their environment. Students who are filled with
self-doubt do not put much effort into school work. They make excuses. As kids
are progressively given the skills to achieve, they develop a sense of
confidence in their ability to succeed, which will motivate them to strive for
more achievement. When I was a kid, I only became a good student when I
discovered, more or less by accident, that I could make good grades.
Discovering that I could make good grades if I tried motivated me to do just
that. This sense has to be earned. It does not come from excuses.
Sources:
Brummelman, Eddie, et al. (2015). Origins of narcissism in
children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1420870112
Klemm, W. R. (2008). Blame Game. How To Win It. Bryan, Tx.:
Benecton.
Yoshie, et al. (2013). Negative emotional outcomes attenuate
sense of agency over voluntary actions. Current Biology.
Dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub2013.08.034
