The new semester

I teach, so I'm always interested in what's being discovered about the students I will be facing, like today when the spring semester started at my college. I came across an article that said young people have an unprecedented level of self-infatuation as revealed in a new analysis of the American Freshman Survey.

Over the last four decades there's been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being 'above average' in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence. Researchers also found a disconnect between the student's opinions of themselves and actual ability. While students are much more likely to call themselves gifted in writing abilities, objective test scores actually show that their writing abilities are far less than those of their 1960s counterparts. I can vouch for that, having seen a ton of papers over the 40+ years I have taught English. 

There's an unpleasant consequence to this for students. A 2006 study found that students suffer from 'ambition inflation' as their increased ambitions accompany increasingly unrealistic expectations. That leads to an increase in anxiety and depression.

This narcissism is often negative and destructive--where does the article lay the blame? Several culprits are easy to point out--parenting styles, celebrity culture, social media, and easy credit.

There was an interesting aspect to this. Despite a library's worth of self-help books promoting the idea we can achieve anything if we believe we can, there's very little evidence that raising self-esteem produces positive, real-world outcomes.

What does matter?  Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported as a cause of personal success. But our society has pushed self-control to the side. It sounds too constricting, so out it goes. The weakening of Christianity and the rise of left-wing, big-government has effectively brought our society to its current flabby morality and lack of personal responsibility. 

The article concludes by saying that narcissistic people mess up their relationships, at home and at work. Though narcissists may be charming at first, their selfish actions eventually damage relationships.  Sound familiar?