I was flicking through some featured articles on my IPad last night when I happened to come across Rod Liddle’s piece: ‘our children urgently need less self-esteem’. I asked myself, do our children need less self-esteem? Preposterous. Of course not, in fact I believe that they need more self-esteem. Low self-esteem is one of the major underlying problems of crime, bullying, unemployment… honestly, the list could go on. Children with low self-esteem suffer from depression and a sense of insignificance and generally have a pessimistic view on all aspects of life.
Whereas children with high self-esteem are positive and seem to do better in life than those who lack confidence. Why? Why should children need less self-esteem when it is already clear that high self-esteem seems to be a better trait in children? Honestly, I really do think this article is just a ’50 year old twat’ ranting about the younger generation, however I have an urge to criticize his opinions because his article is just too fallacious.
Rod Liddles article was a response to the riots earlier last year in the summer, and yes I do agree that they were outrageous and caused a huge calamity nationally, but, like the teachers I would say the kids need more self-esteem rather than less. This is due to the fact that a majority of the rioters probably had low self-esteem to start with and therefore gave into peer pressure to follow some idiots smashing up the shop windows of Poundland just because it seemed like the ‘cool’ thing to do.
Even if some kids have self-esteem which sky rockets to the sky, acting as role models for the rioters, it is probably the parents fault, and the upbringing they had which means it is Liddles generation to blame. I believe that the riots were not started by some random, over-confident teens wanting to take over the nation but were sparked by an outrage when the judicial system failed to explain the accidental shooting and killing of Mark Duggan.
So obviously it is his generation who started the riots In the first place by unjustly ignoring people’s anger, consequently allowing the riots to start. Also, Liddle states that the judicial system is made too liberal saying “if anything goes wrong with a modern child’s life, it is someone else’s fault: teachers, or the Police, or society”. In this he is totally contradicting himself, because the police force is made up of his generation or maybe slightly younger, but all still being adults, so really he is criticizing the wrong people.
In addition, according to Wikipedia, police arrested 3,100 people which is a fairly reasonable amount of people. Meaning the judicial system is not actually that soft, they do lock up a fair amount of wrong doers. As for the teachers, well I’m sure almost everyone on the planet has had a detention or some form of punishment for doing something wrong in school. And if you do something horrifically bad then you are expelled with no exceptions. So tell me again, Liddle, where children are not disciplined?
The riots were not caused only by low self-esteem by also by desperation due to the current economic situation our country is in now. Many people are now broke, poor and depressed, and obviously some people want to do something about it. So when the opportunity arises where you can take whatever you can get hold of, whether you actually want it or get some money out of it then I’m guessing the mind-set is ‘why not? , other people are doing it’.
The state of the economy had to be caused somehow, some time ago and after some research it turns out that it was in fact Liddles generation who caused this total slump. Apparently, ‘back then’ houses were cheaper and loaning from the bank was easier, causing people to have too much self-esteem and consumer confidence. So when people decided they were rich they started buying and buying and buying until they had no money to give back to the banks. Now in the present day all of us have to pay for their expenses and suffer in this drudgingly, slow sink into an economic depression.
Lastly, I am convinced that Liddle is totally unreliable and his use of hyperbole is excessive, he is clearly not a modern day teen and cannot say anything about self-esteem in kids because he simply is not one. Liddle is pretty much 30 years past his prime and cannot accurately state the minds of our modern youths. Many teens are low in self-esteem but merely hide behind a mask to make it seem as though they are ‘significant’ and know it, but in fact they want to curl up in a ball and cry about life.