"Praising obsession" creates generation of egotistical pupils?

[scarletlilybug]

Here

Have to say that I do think the praising of pupils seems to be overdone these days, not to mention the reluctance to correct mistakes for fear of "damaging self-esteem". I have my own personal doubts about how it affects educational attainment, but am less sure about how it might affect the development of personality in the long run.

Nuts.
What this is doing is creating a generation of people who can't handle failure or criticism. Next stop, anarchy, where everyone wants to do it their way and won't accept that it's wrong.

Am seeing that to some extent at work already where some of the bright young things tend to be excessively over-confident in a rather grating way. Has become particularly pronounced in last few years.(Or else I am just grumpier.)

Well, I think positive reinforcement is a great thing. I did some work experience in a school where children were producing some fantastic work, which was never praised or commented on. I noticed how low their general morale was - many of them really lacked in confidence and as a result did not have a lot of drive, when they certainly should have. I thought it was awful

I think things have swung too far in the direction of praise. Of course we should congratulate our kids and encourage them, but in dh's school, failing is referred to as 'delayed success' ffs.

ROFL @ 'delayed success'

no one is saying that there should be no positive reinforcement electra - just that there needs to be a balance.

Children need to learn it is ok to fail, you can always try harder, do better or change to something else to achieve more.

Mental health problems are already predicted to be the number 1 health problem in the developed world in the next decade - I believe that not giving people the tools to cope with failure can only add to that (increased depression etc.)

I think the responsibility lies with parents, not teachers. It must be impossible for a teacher of 20+ kids to get the right balance, some kids who are brighter will find the work easier and achieve more (therefor be praised more), others who struggle may feel that they never achieve anything and rarely get praised.

I agree that balance is key.
The rule of critique should be say one or two positive things and then give constructive critsism.

when I trained as a teacher of EFL, we were taught the "feedback sandwich" - put a positive thing first and last and the criticism in the middle, so that the recipient isn't left feeling "kicked".

Children are with teachers six to seven hours a day. I think teachers should take SOME responsibility. They are in loco after all. Perhaps some don't understand what lies behind motivation, but many do, and don't find it impossible. It's part of the job, I think. It's an interesting subject. Children are pretty acute and endless praise without any judgement at all is not taken seriously by them in the end.

I know dd's spelling improved no end when she went to a new school where mistakes were corrected.
In her old school, the teacher told me the "rule of thumb" was never to highlight more than five mistakes on a page, because any more than that would be demoralising. [hmmm]

I think that constructive criticism needs to be used more,
surely children need to not just be told some thing is either wonderful or wrong.

if they were told how they could make something better by making changes and working further on something,
where the idea of re-doing or re-making something is a positive thing not a negative one.

not all criticism is bad, most of it can be very positive if phrased right.

This thread makes me think of X factor where completely dreadful singers are lied to by their family and friends and so believe they are fantastic.

Exactly, katieastar, and then they think that if they cry and wail "but this is my dream" then the judges will say, "oh, alright then."

I'm a teacher and I just don't recognise this at all. I correct mistakes. I will mark a calculation wrong, and if they've show their working highlight where it went wrong. I correct key word spellings. I correct factual errors and point out where they have made invalid interpretations of data. I also tell them what they've done well and how to improve.

Takes bloody ages

But my point is, I hear this stuff about 'delayed success' and not correcting things to foster self esteem, but I've never actually seen it in practice.

shown their working

See - correction...