Culture and Self esteem

1.      In chapter 13, there is a reading on culture and self-esteem. In the book, it talked about how many cultures have the expectation for children to be modest. This type of modesty is displayed in cultures of the Japanese or Australians. In Japan, although children do well in mathematics and international tests, only a small percentage of them had a high opinion of their abilities. This trend in self esteem can be compared to the United States. In the U.S, although students were very confident in their math abilities, they actually scored lower then the Japanese students! These statistics were very interesting to me because of how I was raised. Similarly like Japan, I think that many Korean children are taught to be modest as well. The lower the self esteem, the higher the academic achievements would be. And to Parents, it made sense since the reasoning is that those who are modest and do not brag, are those who are actually smart.

Also in the reading, it pointed out that currently in the U.S, there are changes being made with grading children. Children’s successes are now praised and instead of letter grades, they receive “Excellent” or “Needs Some Improvement”. This made me wonder if this type of grading system would not only bring up self esteem, but also create modesty overtime due to lack of competition.

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