From a student’s essay:
The enslavement definitely had a negative impact on the indigenous people. It gave them a low self-esteem and made it more difficult for them to achieve their goals in life.
What would your response be if this were your student?
If they have low self esteem, what goals might they have?
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Good point. 🙂
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If this is an assignment that can be revised and resubmitted, I would say something like: Can you expand on this idea? It is a novel interpretation, and needs support if you believe it is valid or true.
If it cannot be resubmitted, I would probably write something more vague, such as “Not clear.”
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I’m thinking of saying, “Let’s not psychoanalyze the indigenous people.”
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Clarissa, it does seem like a reasonable statement on the surface though – being in situations over which you have no control can damage your self esteem. http://www.enslavement.org.uk/cv-maslow would seem like a reasonable take that a slave who has control can benefit from the position however a true slave rather than a BDSM style one is far less likely to have this control.
I would likely indicate that it is an interesting point to look at in terms of the various slave types and to expand upon. As to damaging their goals again it likely did, or rather focused them inwards – family, survival, etc. rather than something more outward facing.
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Of course, I agree that enslavement did nothing good for the self-esteem of the indigenous people. I’m also sure that it didn’t improve their complexions. It’s just strange that somebody would go straight to such insignificant side effects of slavery rather than concentrating on the more obvious ones.
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“How so? Provide evidence.”
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I thought the point of slavery was that you no longer had any goals in besides serving your master ? ;P
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You should put that on “Shit my students write.” LOL.
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A lot of oppressed people enjoy a game of soccer.
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To be honest, if I were asked this kind of question as a teacher, it would set me off in on an endless intellectual inquiry to try to figure out what the student was really asking. What is this magical measure of self-esteem that is supposed to help you get stuff done? I grew up without an ideology of self-esteem. One simply did or didn’t do stuff according to what was permitted or what one could get away with. My inability to address even such a simple question without tying myself in knots might make me reflect on whether my self-esteem was high or not. Is over-thinking a sign of low self-esteem or is related to intellectual rigor? Ultimately, though, does it even matter, if self-esteem is just a cultural product, rather than anything that one can take a measure of?
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Believe me, the last thing I wanted to elicit from my students with this assignment is a discussion of self-esteem. 🙂 This would really be above my pay-grade. 🙂
“Is over-thinking a sign of low self-esteem or is related to intellectual rigor?”
– Depends on what one overthinks. I had a friend who’d spend hours thinking about what to wear outside each morning to avoid looking “too fat and disfigured.” Sometimes, she’d fail to leave the house at all. That kind of overthinking is definitely right there with low self-esteem.
“Ultimately, though, does it even matter, if self-esteem is just a cultural product, rather than anything that one can take a measure of?”
– I think it’s too individual to be cultural. I also think it’s quite easy to measure but it’s something one can do for oneself only. It isn’t something others can do for one. I think a good yardstick would be: when you act, speak, work, interact with people, what is the degree of your freedom? Do you feel inhibited by the fear that people would judge you too harshly, dislike you, etc. if you act authentically with them?
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It’s a loaded question. (Your last sentence.) For instance, in my first job, I was very authentic. Very dry in humour and very spontaneous — and yes, I was judged extremely harshly for that. This was a pathologically dysfunctional workplace. Also, in general, I have found that a lot of people simply don’t like my dry humour and judge me extremely harshly when I “forget myself” and start to speak in this way. There are cultural groups who don’t mind it at all, though. And there are subcultural groups who also find it quite acceptable. For instance, I was at the wash basin, after martial arts class, cleaning my hands after shaking the hand of everybody in the class. There’s another guy from the class who also met me there. We both suddenly descending into some humorous repartee, explaining to each other how it was necessary to “clean off the germs”, because “Oh, no, you wouldn’t want the germs those people might be carrying! ”
It’s actually an Australian working class sense of humour, but not everybody gets it. Mike and I talk to each other like this all the time.
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It’s one thing to fear being authentic with people you have reason to suspect of being unwelcoming. However, low self -esteem makes one expect putdowns from the friendliest, most loving people. For instance, it took me over a year to get N to believe that when I tell him something nice, I don’t do it to ridicule him.
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I’m watching this video, at the moment, which talks about some of the cultural differences between Africa and the US.
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I agree with the woman in the video completely when she says that the outrage over Abut Ghraib was ridiculous. People cheer on when wars are started in their name and then pretend to be shocked to discover that war implies rape, torture, murder. The hypocrisy is mind -numbing.
I understand she is an African writer but I never read anything by her. Have you? Do you recommend?
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The response depends on a few things. If the essay was by your class deadpan specialist, then you can just roll your eyes and brush it off. .
Otherwise we need to know the topic of the essay. If he wasn’t trying to be deadpan or ironic, then I’d suggest asking why he thinks his point is relevant to the topic of the essay.
It also seems to me that he’s confused self esteem with personal autonomy, so my response would be to ask if he meant personal autonomy. But there’s a more serious problem because his statement is true by the very definition of slavery rather than because it shows any insight into whatever the topic is. His statement also reflects a pop psychology approach to slavery.
I’d be blunt, but that’s just my style.
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I think “the pop psychology approach to slavery ” is spot on. Do you mind if I use this brilliant expression?
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Of course you can use it. (But I’m not so sure it’s all that brilliant.)
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I would add afterwards:
To widen your horizons – reading recommended. F.e. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself” is still extremely famous.
Reminded me of “You must escape your context” post about “languages” of cultures. May be it’s me, but I didn’t notice any “self-esteem” talk in Ukraine or even now in Israel. All this stress on self-esteem seems weird already.
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” May be it’s me, but I didn’t notice any “self-esteem” talk in Ukraine”
– And that’s precisely why we all have such huge self-esteem issues. Which is, of course, not in any way related to my course. 🙂
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// And that’s precisely why we all have such huge self-esteem issues. Which is, of course, not in any way related to my course.
We = people from FSU?
Are you serious about it? I don’t see the connection, if one’s family respects you – no need for talking, and the opposite, no?
Do you think Americans feel better about themselves in general? If yes, does it help them?
Could you, please, tell me why Americas in plurial? (If it won’t take you long to type. I am genuinely curious).
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Anyway, like I said, self-esteem wasn’t a problem growing up because individualism wasn’t a problem. There were no individuals as such. We had a basic level of tribal consciousness, with dividing lines in terms generations. We didn’t really think about ourselves too much in individual terms.
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I belong to one of those enslaved groups and growing up it does bring doubts the fact that comparatively very few of your peers seem to reach the very top of most professions.
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The statement is a hilarious, tragic inadvertent tribute to several distinct strands of bullshit of our time. If I’d gotten this in an online course, as I take it you have, my first response would be to contemplate the downside to online teaching, as this is the sort of thing best discussed in person in office hours; can’t imagine how I’d deal with it exclusively in writing.
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You are right! This is definitely one of the downsides of online instruction.
The quote about the importance of getting out of your context in order to appreciate different realities seems especially apt here.
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It would depend on how long the essay was, and what was in the rest of it. Is it in the introduction, or the conclusion, or somewhere in between?
If the context was good I would say it was either:
1. a masterpiece of understatement
2. a good satirical take on currently fashionable jargon for analysing people’s problems
If the context showed that the student did not really understand it, and was using the jargon of (2) above not as satire but in earnest, then I would say it was a student who is only able to think in cliches, and give a low mark.
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The students were required to provide short answers to factual questions. I didn’t see a trace of irony there, to be honest.
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Im thinking if they had really good esteem to begin with wouldnt they have been the enslaver rather than the enslaved? 😉
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I would say this student’s thinking is so limited to their own world, and so circumscribed by the jargon they have learned, that they have a hard time getting beyond it. The description of the effects of slavery is so minimizing relative to the reality that it’s kind of like writing “people in Dachau were unfortunate because they had to miss the opera season.”
I’d encourage them to read something with a vivid description of what slavery was really like and see if it can take them beyond blather about “achieving their goals in life.”
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“I’d encourage them to read something with a vivid description of what slavery was really like and see if it can take them beyond blather about “achieving their goals in life.””
The sentence Clarissa quoted suggests to me that his problem is more that he fails to understand the self esteem movement than that he fails to understand that slavery was bad. So it might be better to have him read something that might get him away from thinking in cliches–something that criticizes the self-esteem movement for example.
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The only cliche here is the existence of the self-esteem movement. Come on, folks, no such thing exists in this country or anywhere I’m aware of.
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It’s not a sociology course.
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David G….got it…I assume it’s a literature course. The odds that anyone can learn to understand/appreciate literature while living in such a limited mental world seem pretty poor.
David Foster
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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