Here's an interesting idea. Instead of making our education competitive with the rest of the world's by raising our standards, we send one of our "experts" overseas so he can screw them up as much as he has us:
Lessons in happiness are to be introduced for 11-year-olds in state schools to combat a huge rise in depression, self-harm and anti-social behaviour among young people.
Special behavioural techniques imported from the US will be used from September next year in an attempt to make children more resilient in the face of the pressures of 21st century living.
Professor Martin Seligman, from the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most influential psychologists of his generation, has been drafted in to train British teachers so that they can deliver classes to nearly 2,000 secondary school pupils.
Self-esteem is a feeling of deserving well-being connected to no beneficial accomplishment. Hitler had self-esteem. Churchill earned self-worth.
Comments
You are absolutely right. Martin Seligman has a long history of promoting flash over substance. He has overextended and promoted one limited or nonsense theory after the other--Learned Helplessness, Attribution, and Positive Psychology.
How can anyone take this clown seriously when he predicted based on his brilliant analysis of their speeches that Dukakis would easily defeat Bush. Why? Because Dukakis's speeches contained more positive statements.
Mr. Happy wrote:
"How can anyone take this clown seriously..?"
Let me repeat that quote.
Mr. Happy wrote,"How can anyone take this clown seriously..?"
"Mr. Happy," vs. "take this clown seriously?"...
I did get a chuckle out of that juxtaposition of forum-name and name calling.
I have no animosity at all toward the poster or this fellow Seligman; I just think it mi-i-ight be advisable, if one is going to denounce a public figure in terms of being a "clown," not to write one's analysis under a forum I.D. along the lines of "Mr. Happy."
And - Robin Williams has a whole bit about 'Mr Happy' - which is very funny!
In fact, I adopted that same term for whenever the need for an informal reference to that region is needed.....so I'm with Steve - that post made me chuckle also!