Self-esteem has become an educational shibboleth. But over-valuing it brings dangers, particularly of dishonesty, manipulation and devaluation of human relationships. Yet there is clearly something here we want to save: a gentler culture with wider possibilities of self-fulfilment. Here I try to distinguish three levels of self-esteem talk. There is the exaltation of self-esteem as the chief aim of education, the therapeutic approach to education and the recognition of self-esteem as one educational value among many. It is the latter, I (...) argue, that can preserve the benefits of the idea of self-esteem while avoiding the worst of its pitfalls. (shrink)

Self-esteem has become an educational shibboleth. But over-valuing it brings dangers, particularly of dishonesty, manipulation and devaluation of human relationships. Yet there is clearly something here we want to save: a gentler culture with wider possibilities of self-fulfilment. Here I try to distinguish three levels of self-esteem talk. There is the exaltation of self-esteem as the chief aim of education, the therapeutic approach to education and the recognition of self-esteem as one educational value among many. It is the latter, I (...) argue, that can preserve the benefits of the idea of self-esteem while avoiding the worst of its pitfalls. (shrink)

Education in the west has become a very knowing business in which students are encouraged to cultivate self-awareness and meta-cognitive skills in pursuit of a kind of perfection. The result is the evasion of contingency and of the consciousness of human finitude. The neo-liberalism that makes education a market good exacerbates this. These tendencies can be interpreted as a dimension of scepticism. This is to be dissolved partly by acknowledging that we are obscure to ourselves. Such an acknowledgement is fostered (...) by the mythic dimension of experience, which also recommends a degree of humility to the citizens of democratic states. (shrink)