The New York Times recently ran an article discussing the effects of self-esteem on people’s behavior.

For years, psychologists have accepted the notion that people with low self-esteem are more likely to be deviant-they are more likely to take drugs, commit crimes and use physical violence. In contrast, people with good self-esteem were supposed to act in just the opposite manner.

The Times article basically dismissed this so-called fact, arguing instead that people with low self-esteem are more likely to try harder in order to earn praise (and increase their self-esteem), while people with good self-esteem don’t try at all because they think enough of themselves as it is and don’t need the extra compliments.

Unfortunately, this wrong-headed notion about good self-esteem being socially beneficial crept into our classrooms before it could be significantly challenged.

I cannot count the times I have witnessed a professor validate some totally ridiculous, entirely false statement from a student with the phrase, “that’s a possibility.” If something is true, the opposite of that truth cannot be “possible”…it is wrong. I was once in a math class when a student gave an incorrect answer to a simple equation and the professor responded with a long-winded soliloquy about how this student’s incorrect answer may actually be correct in some forms of higher mathematics. Instead, he could have simply told the student he was wrong and we could have left class early.

No one starts off knowing everything. I certainly don’t know everything there is to know, but I sure would like to. But if I am continually told that my incorrect answers and assumptions are “possible,” my desire to know more will vanish. If, I, use, too, many, commas, I want to know this. I don’t want to know that I’m doing a good job. I want to know when I’m wrong so I can do it right. And this goes for all of us. We’re dumb…and we should know it.