Self-esteem, as bestowed upon America's youth by the education system, is doing more harm than good. At best, it is a short term fix. At worst, it's a lifelong affliction that haunts people from the beginning of school until the day they die. I saw a ceremony on the TV news honoring the 'Teacher of the Year' for a local school district and the recipient of the award was talking about how wonderful it was to find that 'spark of learning that exists in all children.' This is part of the mantra of public education that says no child will be left behind and all children can learn. "Left behind" where and "learn" what isn't explained.

I am reaching my middle years but can still look back at my school days with reasonable clarity. I know I attended classes with some kids that didn't have a spark. They didn't even have enough rough spots so when rubbed together would produce any heat, much less a spark. They were about as likely to produce light as banging two pieces of wet wood together. Try as they might, there wasn't anything the teachers could do to change the fact that their cognitive functions were not up to the level needed to for mental combustion of any sort. They weren't just dim, they were out.

Things haven't changed. Times have. There was a time when we were not nearly as concerned with the student's self esteem as we were with reality. It was once known that some people in the world would spend their lives doing menial labor like pumping gas or flipping burgers. For those people, the kindest thing we could do was clue them in. That way, they could get on with their lives performing the work available to them as best they could. And it was okay. People took pride in what they did. If they pumped gas, they showed up for work every day, on time. They cleaned the windows, vacuumed the carpet, checked the fluids, and basically did a good job. They were respected for their efforts and they appreciated the opportunity. They were happy because they didn't have any false expectations of what might have been.

The menial labor jobs were and are important. They represented honest work and required diligent effort to be good at them. They required a positive attitude. Success wasn't measured in these jobs as how much money you made but by how good a worker you were. True self-esteem was then and is now the byproduct of personal achievement. Only then, we hadn't forgotten it.

Today, there's a misconception that all ability is either equal or relative. All kids are told from the moment they enter school that they are smart. Euphemisms like "some children are just smart in different ways" are used to protect children and their parents from harsh reality. This isn't entirely the fault of the schools. The last thing parents wish to hear is that little Johnny or Susie is a dim bulb or that perhaps they should be saving up for vocational school instead of Harvard. So, what happens is that little Johnny and Susie are told from the moment school begins until they get their diplomas that they are just as capable and smart as everyone else.

So they march across the stage and out into the real world. They drop out of college when they can't cut it academically, or they get fired from their jobs because they haven't caught on fast enough. They then start to think something may be amiss. They end up with the menial job anyway. The only difference is that they aren't happy doing it. They aren't making $100,000 and believe they have somehow been cheated. So they don't do a good job and they spend their lives being unhappy because nothing they are capable of meets the expectation drilled into them since kindergarten. People who are unhappy in their work often do it badly. The worker isn't happy, the customer isn't happy and the employer can't seem to find good help.