Not All Should Say "I Like ME!"

The promotion of little children singing "I Like ME!" implies that all children may quickly learn to be proud of whatever they do, good or bad! It's interesting that when children learned that God would love them and help them along, that had to be removed from school. But, it's all right for them to learn to love themselves, loveable or not — that's what the idea implies.

Praise for doing well and accomplishing something, or making sure (on the part of the teacher) that each child gets a little help and a little attention in the early grades could go much farther than teaching each child that they like themselves and that's all that's needed.

Carrying the idea just a little bit farther — and back to the Littleton situation, it's difficult to encourage a child to love himself/herself when it also implies that they can do anything they want to others, do anything they want to themselves, not to worry. As long as they like or love themselves in the process, everything is on track. There is nothing loveable about students who are rude, deface their bodies, worship sick historical figures and sicker philosophies.

The concentration on feelings, fitting in, tolerance of anything at all just to be tolerant, encouragement of self-centered focus — all have worked to bring us to this point. Taking a new generation of children and focusing more on their liking themselves — without simultaneously and just as determinedly focusing on their being worthy of "liking themselves", is going to make a bad situation much worse.

I remember the words of educators who, like Marva Collins, said that whatever children endured outside the classroom, whatever they did elsewhere, did not matter. In the classroom, there would be respect, dignified behavior, attention to learning, applied to every student equally.

Where is the theme of "I Like ME" when role playing is such a large part of so much education today? Students are drawn away from even learning who "ME" is! Especially when the "ME" who seems to be getting the most attention, via role playing and agenda-pushing, is not the "ME" who the child actually is or wants to be.

Can a child believe "I Like ME!" when his own personal conventional lifestyle or religion is held up to ridicule? When his own moral code is called by names which help advance the agendas the child's own moral beliefs are opposite to?

If we are to adopt an "I Like ME!" program, then we must simultaneously eradicate all agendas which supersede the individual and promote a group alien to what many children come from and likely are proud of. We must take out of education all that doesn't benefit students as a whole, all that is not academic based or even-handedly presented.

Otherwise, you are adding fuel to the fire of the cauldron already boiling over.

Feelings, touchy-feely programs and projects, corporate influences, foundation agendas — look where we've come with that. Self-importance won't be replaced by self-worth if nothing is changed overall.

Joan Battey

New York

© May 1999

╪