Hugh Mackay has an interesting column in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend. He's examining the difference between the concepts of self-respect and self-esteem within the context of which of these qualities we try to pass onto our children in contemporary society.

I have to admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that I could be categorised in those he condemns — "all over the country we have been hearing the merchants of self-esteem flogging their suspect merchandise".

Hugh Mackay Photo source: ABC

Up until I read Mackay's observations last night I'd never really thought about these subtle distinctions between self-respect and self-esteem which he is focusing on. He writes:

Self-esteem is the simpering twin of happiness. They are seductive but vacuous distractions that sap our motivation, our courage and our peace of mind. "I want them to be happy," we say, as if we believe perpetual happiness is not just a worthwhile goal but the birthright of every child.

Later in his article he contrasts self-esteem to the more worthy quality of self-respect in these words...

Self-respect is inextricably linked to the hard slog and the long haul. It's not glamorous and glitzy. It doesn't have people clapping us and slapping us on the back. This is the secret we need to let our children into: there are no short-cuts, emotional or moral, to self-respect whereas self-esteem is a short-cut, an illusion, a game.

This is as true for schools, churches, companies or whole nations as it is for individuals. The blind patriot is typically in the grip of a mindless, national self-esteem far removed from the more sceptical, balanced respect most of us feel for our homeland. "My country, right or wrong" is as mad a sentiment as "me, right or wrong".

In the past I have written articles lauding the importance of self-esteem as a key ingredient in the educational process. In hindsight, what my articles should have been about is self-respect.

From long observation I am sure all of us face a limitation that is somehow imposed on us internally. I've long been acutely aware in my own wider extended family amongst my more immediate cousins and mates that the differences between us were not innate limitations of the amount of intelligence or intellectual capacity each of us had. The far more constraining influence was a set of values that were somehow set in the slightly different home environments we happened to have been brought up in. I was the first, probably going back generations, who benefitted from a tertiary education. That was not a choice of my parents I am sure. My mother's highest expectations for me had been "to get a trade" and had I remained in the bosom of the family home rather than being sent away to boarding school at a young age where I was dragged along by peer group inluences to university, like my cousins, that is probably what I would have ended up doing. Interestingly enough within a few years this old barrier had broken down due to forces in wider society impelling more and more young people to undertake tertiary studies and for the younger members of my own generation it became almost automatici that everyone went on to some kind of tertiary education. For their children the exceptions have been those who did not undertake tertiary studies.

It was from that personal experience that I had become a chorister to the mantra of encouraging a healthy sense of self-esteem in young people. Hugh Mackay's commentary yesterday, has arrested decades of thinking — maybe what I should have been promoting all this time is not a healthy sense of self-esteem but a healthy sense of self-respect? I commend his commentary to you which you can find at: www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/. In the meantime I'm still mulling over all of this and hopefully we can continue this conversation in our forum.

Tom Scott

Tom Scott is the pen name of the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne.

©2006 Tom Scott

[Index of Sunday Reflections] | [Index of Commentaries by Tom Scott]