Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 42, No.

1, 2008

The Educational Importance of Self-Esteem

MATT FERKANY

Some philosophers of education have recently argued that

educators can more or less ignore children’s global self-
esteem without failing them educationally in any important
way. This paper draws on an attachment theoretic account
of self-esteem to argue that this view is mistaken. I argue that
understanding self-esteem’s origins in attachment supports
two controversial claims. First, self-esteem is a crucial
element of the confidence and motivation children need in
order to engage in and achieve educational pursuits,
especially in certain domains of instruction such as physical
education. Second, self-esteem can be facilitated socially,
through an appropriate arrangement of school institutions,
thus without hindering the pursuit of other high priority aims
such as a challenging academic curriculum. Consequently
I maintain that educators who ignore self-esteem overlook
something educationally important.

I
Should school teachers and administrators worry themselves much about
the esteem children have for themselves as persons, i.e. their ‘global’ self-
esteem (henceforth, just ‘self-esteem’)? In recent work on the subject, two
authors have advanced an array of arguments maintaining that they need not
at all (Kristjánsson, 2007) or not much (Smith, 2002, 2006). Some are
consequentialist—efforts to foster self-esteem in the classroom, it is argued,
conflict with the pursuit of other more important educational aims, such as
academic achievement or character education (Smith, 2002). Others are
more deontological—it is claimed that low self-esteem persons are not all
‘head cases’ after all, in need of being cured; rather, they can be lovable and
perfectly successful (Smith, 2006). Another argument is conceptual: self-
esteem is supposedly not connected conceptually to the confidence, and thus
the motivation, children need in order to be good learners or behave well
(Kristjánsson, 2007). A related, empirical argument claims that self-esteem
is not connected to it causally either (ibid.). Were these arguments
persuasive, it would seem educators could largely ignore children’s self-
esteem without failing them in any educationally important way.
I do not think this is so. While there is a common account of self-esteem
and its educational significance that is somewhat vulnerable to the

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120 M. Ferkany

arguments of Kristjánsson and Smith, I will argue that their arguments

are unsound or do not apply to an appropriately sophisticated account,
which I call the attachment account. According to that account, self-
esteem is importantly connected to the confidence and motivation children
need in order to engage in and achieve educational goals and can and
should be facilitated socially, i.e. not just, or even primarily, through the
interactions between teacher and student, but between student and the
social environment of the school itself. This is especially the case, I will
argue, in certain domains of instruction such as physical education and the
arts. Consequently, school educators should concern themselves with the
self-esteem of children, especially in these domains of instruction.
The argument proceeds as follows. Section II outlines a simple account
of self-esteem and its educational significance and discusses its vulner-
ability to Smith and Kristjánsson’s arguments. Section III introduces the
attachment account and responds to Kristjánsson’s conceptual and
empirical arguments. Section IV then elaborates the significance of self-
esteem for education in light of the attachment account and responds to
Smith’s consequentialist argument. Section V responds to Smith’s deon-
tological argument and concludes.

II
The current literature features various accounts of self-esteem and its
educational significance, e.g. Ruth Cigman’s ‘situated self-esteem’ (2004)
or Kristjánsson’s ‘justified’ conception (2007). Here I outline a standard
account of which some of these others can be seen as variations. I use this
account in what follows for two reasons. One, while Smith and
Kristjánsson do not explicitly treat it as the target of their critiques, it
illustrates well the force of their arguments. Second, it is also a very
common account in both professional literature and ordinary talk about
self-esteem.
According to the standard account, self-esteem is how a person feels
about herself, good or bad, and as manifested in a variety of ways, e.g. in
pride or shame, but especially in self-confidence (US Dept. of Health and
Human Services [US DHHS], n.d.). Because people can feel more or less
well about themselves and be more or less self-confident, the standard
account asserts that self-esteem can be high, low and somewhere in
between. However, high self-esteem is claimed to have a variety of
behavioural benefits. These include independence, responsibility taking,
toleration of frustration, resistance to peer pressure, willingness to attempt
new tasks and challenges, ability to handle positive and negative
emotions, and willingness to offer assistance to others (ibid.).
Obviously, these behaviours are very desirable educationally. People
able to handle frustration, take risks and work independently make good
learners. Were high self-esteem also related to responsibility-taking,
imperviousness to peer pressure, emotional stability and altruism, it would
appear to be crucial to good moral character as well. Scholars of education
and public policy makers have not overlooked these supposed benefits. The

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California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social

Responsibility endorses virtually all of them (Mecca, 1990). More recently,
Ruth Cigman maintains that self-esteem is a crucial component of the
confidence, and so the motivation, that children need in order to succeed
academically and as persons (2004). Call this the motivational claim.
While decidedly controversial, the reasoning behind the motivational
claim is both intuitive and supported by introspection. Relative to
achieving a difficult or challenging task, a person who is preoccupied with
self-doubt cannot just get on with it or focus on it to the degree that doing
it well demands. Moreover, nervous self-doubt impairs the functioning of
the faculties needed to execute effectively, for instance, the ability to think
clearly and critically. It is also intuitive and seemingly confirmed by
introspection that the confidence manifesting high self-esteem is important
to good character. On the one hand, people who doubt their worth or com-
petence can be maddeningly difficult to deal with, oblivious to the bright
side and susceptible to envy and jealousy. On the other hand, a person who
is confident of her worth can respond to threats without anxious concern to
defend herself, or simply shrug them off as they deserve.
The standard account of self-esteem and its educational significance is,
however, vulnerable to Smith’s and Kristjánsson’s arguments to some
extent. Consider the consequentialist argument. It says, contra the
motivational claim, that efforts to foster self-esteem in the classroom
hinder the pursuit of other high priority aims, including those for which
the standard account claims self-esteem is a necessary precondition, e.g. a
high degree of academic accomplishment. The argument gets traction in
light of the supposed pedagogical requirements of fostering self-esteem.
The authors of ‘Building Self-Esteem in Children’, for instance, instruct
parents to ‘be generous with praise’, ‘teach positive self-statements’ and
‘avoid criticism that takes the form of ridicule or shame’ (US DHHS).
Presumably, teachers should follow suit, and apparently many have. Smith
cites the Cantors who instruct teachers to swap talk of punishment for
misbehaviour with talk of ‘consequences’ (Smith, 2002, p. 93). But
academic and behavioural instruction inherently require criticism that is
liable to engender negative feelings about the self, which, on the standard
account, is just what low self-esteem comes to. Thus, it appears that
teachers cannot both instruct children academically and behaviourally and
foster their self-esteem at the same time.
The apparent conflict between fostering self-esteem and academic and
behavioural instruction is a central problem for those who favour making
self-esteem an educational priority. Yet even were it resolvable, Smith’s
and Kristjánsson’s other arguments constitute their own case against
worrying much about school children’s self-esteem. The empirical
argument, for instance, maintains that experimental support for the
motivational claim is too weak. As Kristjánsson has noted, many studies
find only what most psychologists consider a weak correlation, about .20,
between low self-esteem and undesirable educational outcomes such as
academic underperformance (Kristjánsson, 2007). Furthermore, many
studies find as much evidence that achievement causes self-esteem as the

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122 M. Ferkany

opposite. If the empirical argument is cogent, whether the consequentialist

one is sound is beside the point—even if teachers could both foster self-
esteem and appropriately critique children’s work and punish their bad
behaviour at the same time, the pay off would be insignificant.
Empirical evidence aside, Kristjánsson objects that the standard account
of self-esteem and its significance is mistaken to connect self-esteem and
self-confidence in the way that the motivational claim requires. The
motivational claim connects self-esteem to achievement by connecting it
to self-confidence, which has fairly obvious educational advantages. But,
as Kristjánsson argues, self-esteem and self-confidence seem to be in some
sense distinct, neither being sufficient for the other. For example, consider
a ‘student (. . . moving countries) whose school-based self-esteem in her
home country was low, but who relishes the chance of moving to a new
place where she thinks she will be able to do better’ (p. 260). Here
confidence appears to be unaffected by low self-esteem. But then, if it is
confidence that is crucial to motivation, educators ought to focus not on
self-esteem but self-confidence. According to Kristjánsson, this view is
supported by empirical research finding a ‘much stronger link between
self-confidence and school performance than between self-esteem and
school performance’ (ibid.).
Finally, Smith maintains that there is a serious question concerning the
coherence of our beliefs about low self-esteem’s status as a character
defect. The standard account seems to assume that our beliefs here are
unified and wholly negative—low self-esteem is a defect and should be
‘managed’ or ‘cured’ through the techniques of self-help, Circle Time,
assertiveness training, or ‘personalised learning’ (in which every task is
tailored to the capacities of the child) (Smith, 2006, p. 56). But when we
investigate our beliefs carefully, Smith claims, we also find admiration
and love for diffidence and low self-esteem. Citing examples of diffident
sorts, such as Fanny in Austen’s Mansfield Park, Smith argues against
Hume’s claim that we love the diffident person because of her capacity to
develop into the modest one and maintains that, ‘We love the diffident
person because of her very diffidence and not because, by being
‘‘improved’’, she will become otherwise’ (p. 54). Smith concludes that
there is thus ‘something chilling’ about the deployment of instructional
techniques in the service of raising self-esteem, as if people like Fanny
‘would be improved by being cured of’ their diffidence (p. 56).
On the basis of arguments like these, Kristjánsson and Smith conclude
that educators ought not to worry themselves at all (Kristjánsson) or much
(Smith) about children’s self-esteem. Though the arguments are different
and their final positions not quite the same, the shared upshot is that
educators would not fail children in any important way if they put concern
for self-esteem largely aside.

III
The arguments of Kristjánsson and Smith fail, I will argue, to show that
educators can safely put aside concern for children’s self-esteem. Some of

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the arguments on critical scrutiny are simply not very strong. On the other
hand, thinking about self-esteem’s educational significance in terms of the
attachment account reveals responses to the others.
To begin with the attachment account, it is best introduced by contrast
to what I will call a cognitive-Jamesian account, because of its origins in
the thought of William James (1950). James maintained that the esteem a
person has for herself is a function of the ratio of her aspirations to
acknowledged successes. That is, the more that a person believes she is
successful according to her own standards, the more esteem she will have
for herself. The cognitive-Jamesian account is thus ‘cognitive’ because it
maintains that self-esteem is structured by our beliefs.
The role assigned to belief in the cognitive-Jamesian account is at the
heart of the difference between it and the attachment account. Like the
standard account, which identifies self-esteem with feelings, the attach-
ment account denies that self-esteem is structured at its foundation by
beliefs. However, unlike the standard account, it maintains that the most
fundamental determinant of self-esteem is not any feeling itself, but a
relatively stable disposition to beliefs and feelings expressing positive or
negative self-regard, e.g. pride or shame or confidence or self-doubt. On
this view, a disposition to take a certain attitude toward the self precedes
and partly determines which beliefs about our merits we will accept. The
attachment account thus views self-esteem as a relatively stable character
trait constituted by an array of cognitions and feelings, namely all those
expressing a positive, negative, or other attitude toward the self.
The attachment account is ‘attachment theoretic’ because it maintains
that whether we are disposed to largely positive, negative, or more neutral
beliefs and feelings is primarily a function of the quality of our childhood
attachment to our parents.1 All children expect that their parents will be
readily available to pay attention to them, especially in times of distress.
But repeated frustration of this expectation is thought to ramify into a
habit of self-doubt for the child about her worthiness of that attention, or
indeed of the attention of anyone at all. In other words, into low self-
esteem.
As a general theory of self-esteem, the attachment account has
significant advantages over the cognitive-Jamesian account. As a matter
of introspection, the experience of self-esteem seems more affectively
charged than a mere belief in one’s success, worthiness, or lack thereof.
Furthermore, the cognitive-Jamesian account makes social acceptance or
approval a matter of self-esteem only insofar as we aspire to it, but this
seems mistaken. Probably the majority of people, including self-professed
rugged individualists, desire social acceptance and are weighed down by
its absence. For another, it is odd to think of high self-esteem as a belief,
as if people with high self-esteem go around constantly thinking to
themselves ‘I’m great’ and those with low self-esteem thinking ‘I’m a
loser’. On the other hand, it is comparatively natural to think of it as a
disposition to assent to some such belief when prompted. Perhaps this is
even how the cognitive-Jamesian account should be construed. However,
even this disposition is insufficient to explain self-esteem, since many

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persons have it, yet we would not be willing to say that they are high self-
esteem persons. What is missing is a basic disposition to experience the
self as somehow good or bad unmediated by accepted beliefs. Imagine an
academic who is high achieving, beloved by her intimates and associates,
and knows it. She has and acknowledges every reason to believe in her
success and worthiness of the love, respect and esteem of others. Imagine,
however, that, well into tenure, she anxiously doubts and interrogates
herself in the face of ordinary tasks, such as writing or presenting a new
paper, asking an associate for a relatively minor favour, or confronting a
difficult student. On such occasions, she encounters herself as a problem
that must be overcome before anything else can happen. Am I good
enough to work on this problem? Do I really belong in academia? And
whenever things do go wrong, she thinks, ‘I’m an idiot, how could I be so
stupid?’ I see no reason to think such people do not exist, yet they lack the
confident sense of competence and worthiness that belongs to normal high
self-esteem.
So there are many reasons for understanding self-esteem attachment
theoretically. Note however that the attachment account rejects Kristjáns-
son’s conceptual argument, for it maintains that some threshold level of
dispositional self-confidence is necessary for high self-esteem. But in light
of its advantages, this seems correct. Moreover, it is perfectly compatible
with Kristjánsson’s claim. Of course not every occasion on which a person
judges herself to be inadequate must be one where she lacks self-confi-
dence about her possibilities of future success. Perhaps there’s something
different about the imagined future that, to her mind, justifies the
optimism. But ongoing patterns of anxious self-doubt still manifest low
self-esteem. The relevant question in the case of Kristjánsson’s schoolgirl
is: what happens when she begins to confront genuine challenges to her
abilities in her new circumstances?
In re-connecting self-esteem to qualities in turn connected to a person’s
motivational capacities, the attachment account also thus rejects
Kristjánsson’s empirical argument. It is noteworthy that this argument’s
strength is in any case not obviously overwhelming, for it is (or should be)
controversial how weak the so-called weak correlations Kristjánsson cites
are. While a .20 correlation is commonly regarded as weak in psycholo-
gical science, in medical science, a correlation of this magnitude between,
say, smoking and cancer, would seem to be ample reason to quit smoking,
for it suggests that 1/5 of smokers will develop a commonly fatal disease.
This is significant indeed. Similarly, if 1/5 of low self-esteem students do
much worse than others, this would appear to be ample reason for concern.
But suppose I am wrong about that. Nevertheless, as just argued, habits
of nervous self-doubt and self-recrimination are conceptually tied to lower
self-esteem, habits of basic self-confidence to higher self-esteem. Now
many studies, as Kristjánsson notes, connect self-confidence more
strongly to achievement than to self-esteem. So educators should foster
self-confidence. But in light of the attachment account, this will often not
be possible without also addressing their self-esteem, since for low self-
esteem persons, the root cause of habits of self-doubt is a deeply ingrained

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 The Educational Importance of Self-Esteem 125

sense of unworthiness stemming from experiences of rejection. Further-

more, some newly emerging research finds that secure parental attachment
is positively associated with academic motivation (Duchesne and Larose,
2007) and performance (Cotterell, 1992). Other research, though more
general in scope, has obvious educational implications. Sue Gerhardt, for
instance, reviews in detail research connecting poor infant-parent
attachment to low self-esteem and underdevelopment of parts of the
brain responsible for regulating emotions (Gerhardt, 2004, Part I). In turn,
she connects both to educationally damaging behavioural tendencies, such
as an inability to inhibit inappropriate behaviours or seek relief from
intense emotions through self-distraction or in the support of others (Part
II). But while the damage Gerhardt outlines is not necessarily permanent,
because attachment and self-esteem are tied together, a primary avenue to
its repair runs though self-esteem (Part III, Ch. 9). Hence, in the
educational domain, addressing self-esteem may be a requirement of
resolving confidence or attachment problems that affect academic
motivation and performance.
I conclude that the empirical record is at worst ambiguous on the
educational significance of self-esteem and possibly very supportive.
From this claim, it does not follow that fostering self-esteem should jump
to the top of the list of educational goals. However, it does mean that in
thinking about self-esteem’s educational significance, we must, for now,
fall back on reason more than Kristjánsson has. As I will argue below,
there are many good reasons for believing that low self-esteem is an
important impediment to achievement or the will to behave well,
especially in certain domains of instruction.

IV
Understanding self-esteem attachment theoretically, I will now argue,
supports two educationally important claims. First, it supports the
motivational claim – that is, the claim that self-esteem is important to
the confidence children need in order to engage and succeed in educational
pursuits, especially in certain domains of instruction. Second, it supports
the view that self-esteem can be facilitated in schools without hindering
the pursuit of other important educational aims. The defence of this claim
will take the remainder of this section. But, in light of it, I maintain that (a)
fostering self-esteem, at least indirectly, is generally an important
educational priority and that (b) relative to certain domains of instruction,
especially physical education and the arts, school educators should make
concern for self-esteem among their highest priorities.
To begin with an obvious objection, there is a definite sense in which
understanding self-esteem attachment theoretically makes it vulnerable to
the problems raised by the consequentialist argument. Because children’s
self-esteem depends most heavily on the quality of their attachment to
their parents, teachers can have relatively little direct impact. A teacher’s
relationship to her students is simply not that important. In fact, some

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theorists believe that children’s relationship to their peers is more impor-

tant (Harter, 1999). Consequently, teachers certainly should not attempt to
take on such a role. Any efforts to foster self-esteem reaching this level
must indeed interfere with the pursuit of higher priority educational aims,
since it must quite literally take the place of care giving or friendship.
However, it does not follow that there are not very important things
educators can and ought to do that will foster self-esteem without hinder-
ing the pursuit of other high priority aims, e.g. a challenging curriculum.
To show why, I need to take a fairly lengthy detour through political
philosophy via a corollary of the attachment account of self-esteem.
The corollary I have in mind claims that self-esteem is significantly
social in nature. Because the fundamental element of self-esteem is the
extent to which a person takes herself to be worthy of the love, respect, or
esteem of others, the attachment account implies that experiencing the self
as socially excluded or rejected is especially liable to trigger feelings of
shame or humiliation and, therefore, reinforce habits of self-recrimination
or tendencies to beliefs and feelings of unworthiness. So people are to
some extent dependent upon the acceptance of others for their self-esteem.
To elaborate this, imagine that your social world is as follows. You have
some associates that you get along with, but you do not generally feel that
you fit in very well with any of them. In fact, it seems to you that you
always have to make quite an effort to fit in. Thus, you try at first to do
things that they clearly value and for which they will therefore respect
you. But to your shame you find that you are not very good at them and
being bad at them seems to make matters worse. Whereas before it was
merely suspected that you were incompetent, you have now removed all
doubt. As a consequence, you stop trying these things unless you are
forced to or else find yourself in that rare situation where success is
guaranteed. Though this leaves you something of an outsider, at least
when invisible you are not so vulnerable to shame or humiliation. On the
other hand, there are some things that you do rather well, but you have not
found many forums for their pursuit and it has been your experience that
your talents are not valued very highly by others. Indeed many find your
excellences comical or ridiculous and have on occasion taunted you for
them. Some of them have even inspired fear for your safety.
The situation in this story is a familiar worry in political philosophy.
There it is widely believed that the social nature of self-esteem grounds a
duty of justice to arrange social institutions in ways conducive to people
acquiring and maintaining self-esteem. There is disagreement about
precisely which arrangements of institutions satisfy this duty, but wide
agreement on the general criteria. Just arrangements do not shame or
humiliate anyone, at least not undeservingly, and they make it possible for
everyone to find and participate in an association where they and their
talents and accomplishments can be esteemed by like-minded others (call
these esteem groups). Borrowing from John Rawls (1971), call freedom
from undeserved shame and humiliation and esteem groups the social
bases of self-esteem.2 For the person in the story above, the social bases of
self-esteem are sorely lacking.

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Not every theorist agrees to precisely these criteria for the social bases
of self-esteem, some advancing stronger requirements.3 It is also
controversial how stringent the requirement to supply the social bases
of self-esteem is or how central it is to justice. However, it is powerfully
intuitive that there is some such requirement and that it carries significant
weight. Imagine that, by virtue of the design of social institutions, specific
segments of society (women, say) are disproportionately vulnerable to the
shame and outsider status just described. The vulnerability is a significant
burden and disadvantage and, insofar as it is owing to the design of
changeable social institutions, the arrangement is prima facie unjust.
Now, schools are social worlds with their own basic social structure, one
that can be more or less supportive of self-esteem. Assuming that the
social bases of self-esteem for school children are the same as those for
adults, schools support and foster self-esteem just when they do not shame
or humiliate children undeservedly and make it possible for all to enjoy an
appropriate esteem group. Unfortunately, it seems that many school
environments, like the social world described above, are not very
supportive of self-esteem. In some ways, this seems obvious. Children
themselves tend to make things difficult by forming esteem groups that are
markedly exclusive and hostile toward outsiders. For children who find
themselves on the outside, the experience can be very painful. Insofar as
this is the case, however, it points to two important general ways educators
can seek to foster self-esteem.
First, they can make efforts to ameliorate the ‘popularity contest’
between children. This presumably is what advocates of strategies like
Circle Time have been trying to do directly. I think they are right to,
though it is noteworthy that, on the one hand, not all direct strategies need
to have this character, and such strategies may not be the best anyway.
Take the first claim first. It seems to me, for instance, that normal practices
of punishing children who behave cruelly to others are at least as
important, though this may seem to threaten the self-esteem of the culprit.
However, as I will argue below, the threat to self-esteem of punishment is
exaggerated. Second, because the problem of fostering self-esteem
socially is a systemic one, one deriving from the design of social
institutions, it needs a systematic solution. Consequently, the best
strategies may well be indirect ones setting up a school and classroom
environment minimising occasions for shame/humiliation and motivating
children to work together collegially. This is more easily said than done,
but that does not imply that teachers should not try. Nor does it necessarily
imply, for example, that all competition between children must be
avoided, for whether a loss is humiliating, say, depends on the collegiality
of the social environment. Hence, if collegiality is taught, an effort is
made to foster self-esteem in a way that need not conflict with instruction
requiring competition.
Second, the organisation of well-advertised and funded extra-curricular
clubs, beyond traditional ones like debating clubs, is an independent way
to work toward a school environment supplying the social bases of self-
esteem. Such clubs would provide forums in which children of diverse

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talents could find themselves and their aspirations affirmed by those whose
opinion really matters, namely those who share their interests. What is
important from the standpoint of supplying the social bases of self-esteem
is that there is a diversity of such associations, from computer club for the
computer nerds to Gay-Straight Alliances for homosexual children.
The social nature of self-esteem, however, I believe has even more
specific implications for certain domains of instruction. Take physical
education. Because of the public nature of performance in this domain, a
child’s degree of excellence in it, or lack thereof, is typically widely
available publicly, not least to her peers. Consequently, in this domain
many children—especially the unathletic—are highly vulnerable to shame
or humiliation, for it is precisely public exposure as inadequate or
powerless that triggers those feelings. Furthermore, the vulnerability here is
particularly acute given the value commonly placed on athletic excellence
among both adults and children. As a consequence, many children are
liable to withdraw from athletic participation at the first chance they get.
I submit that this move, though in one way protective for the child, can
be deeply damaging educationally. For one thing, the child has now lost
the will to participate in athletics, which is a, if not the, primary avenue to
lifelong fitness and health. Since inculcating in children a lifelong
relationship to fitness is presumably a very high priority educational aim,
especially given the emerging epidemic of obesity, school environments
having this effect are failures on an important level. Second, it is widely
agreed that there are important reciprocal self-esteem benefits from sport
participation that bear again on the child’s relationship to fitness and
general self-confidence. The general self-esteem and confidence of those
who participate benefits, while those receiving the benefits are further
motivated to participate. Children who withdraw thus cut themselves out
of a crucial avenue to fitness and a higher degree of well-being. Third,
because sport figures so large in children’s social status, those who do not
participate are liable to withdraw more generally from social life,
particularly if they also do not excel in other socially valued ways. But
children in this situation are vulnerable, as the motivational claim
maintains, to lose the sort of basic confidence needed to take risks and
confront challenges smoothly. This is a disadvantage for them as learners
and as moral persons.
In many American schools, this situation seems needlessly exacerbated
by the institution of school-sponsored competitive sport. Despite some
progress, boys’ sports appear to remain disproportionately favoured in the
social world of schools as against both girls’ sports and nonathletic
activities such as the arts.4 But as a symbolic expression of the relatively
greater importance of male athleticism, this is itself an affront to the self-
worth of girls and the unathletic. At the same time, it serves to reproduce
the cultural obsession with male sport, which as I have just argued, is
problematic with regard to children’s physical education and, through its
self-esteem related effects, potentially their education generally.
Now the consequentialist argument maintains that efforts to foster self-
esteem impede the pursuit of other high priority aims, such as a highly

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challenging curriculum. However, relative to domains of instruction like

physical education and the arts, instruction that inculcates a lifelong desire
for involvement is more important than instruction securing a high degree
of achievement. Thus, the considerations that drive the consequentialist
argument are not operative here. Moreover, in these domains there is an
important coincidence between instruction that will inculcate a life of
involvement and that fostering self-esteem. Physical education instructors,
for instance, will likely best achieve the aim of inculcating a lifelong
desire for involvement by pursuing strategies that minimise shame and
humiliation and maximise inclusiveness—in other words, that will foster
self-esteem. Furthermore, insofar as school institutions surrounding sport
are problematic in the way I have described, some aspects of the
institution could be modified to better support self-esteem with relative
ease. No doubt performance in physical education will always be public,
thus rendering children particularly vulnerable to shame/humiliation. Yet
participation and hoopla surrounding sport could be made more equal
between boys’ sports, girls’ sports and other non-academic domains of
instruction such as the arts. Sports and arts participation (where ‘art’
includes visual arts, music, theatre, dance, creative writing, etc.) could
also be made mandatory for all students and exclusively intramural. Such
changes would potentially have the effect of unravelling the bias toward
sport in the school popularity contest and so raising the probability that all
children will stay engaged in both athletics and the arts. In turn, it is
reasonable to think that this would ensure that more children stay engaged
socially, find an appropriate esteem group and so continue to adjust
socially.
Hence, in at least some domains of instruction, self-esteem is moti-
vationally important and susceptible to instruction without undue cost to
the pursuit of other important aims. However, I would also like to argue
that, in light of the social bases of self-esteem, the requirements of in-
struction in academics and behaviour also need not radically conflict with
important efforts to foster self-esteem.
First, consider academics. The social bases of self-esteem include
esteem groups. Relative to the classroom context, this implies that
teachers are fostering self-esteem so long as they make efforts to ensure
that all children feel welcome and safe, and can find an esteem group.
Again, this aim may be achieved directly through activities like Circle
Time, but as discussed above such strategies are not intrinsically
necessary. What matters is that the teachers find ways to get children to
cooperate with one another and engender an environment making
competition safe. Furthermore, critiquing students’ work need not be
particularly shame- or humiliation-producing. While criticism is often
frustrating or disappointing, only particularly tactless or impolite criticism
could be expected to hurt so much as shame or humiliation. Moreover,
shame and humiliation tend to be roused by public exposure as inadequate
or powerless. But academic evaluations tend to be largely private, marks
on a piece of paper easily concealed from others. Moreover, unlike
athletics, children tend not to evaluate one another so much on grounds of

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130 M. Ferkany

academics, so even exposure as inadequate here is not so much of a threat.

Hence, contra the consequentialist argument, instructing students
academically and fostering self-esteem need not radically conflict.
Second, consider behavioural instruction. It is true, of course, that
punishment renders children highly vulnerable to public exposure as
inadequate and consequently to shame or humiliation. Of necessity,
punishments tend to be public affairs. However, and first, as a matter of
ordinary decency, teachers can and should avoid carrying out punishments
that children are likely to experience as humiliating. But where this is not
possible, deserved punishments causing shame or humiliation tend to be
deserved shames or humiliations. Since there is no social responsibility to
avoid these, teachers inflicting them cannot be charged with failing to
foster self-esteem. Second, while systematic, arbitrary experiences of
shame or humiliation can lower self-esteem, presumably punishments will
not amount to systematic, arbitrary public shames/humiliations, but
deserved and temporary retributions for wrongs. Hence, the threat to self-
esteem of ordinary practices of punishment is exaggerated.

V
I have argued that self-esteem is important to the motivation children need
in order to be successful in school, especially in certain domains of
instruction such as physical education, and that educators can seek to
provide its social bases without hindering the pursuit of other high priority
aims such as academic achievement. If so, facilitating children’s self-
esteem in schools may after all be a very important educational aim. This
is not to suggest that self-esteem is a unifying aim of education or the
highest priority aim. Other aims play crucial roles and some, such as
achievement, are presumably of higher priority in at least some contexts,
for instance, the academic one. Neither is it to imply that self-esteem
facilitating education is a complete moral education, for good character
calls for many qualities, some of which may even compete with self-
esteem. On some accounts self-respect, for instance, is an important but
distinct character trait calling for a degree of modesty or accuracy of self-
regard.5 Nevertheless, facilitating self-esteem is an important educational
priority, and this is to say that omitting it is a genuine way of failing
children educationally.
There is a last objection to this claim I have not addressed, namely
Smith’s character argument. The argument claims that we find low self-
esteem persons perfectly lovable; thus, we cannot coherently think that
low self-esteem is something to be cured. I wholeheartedly agree.
Nevertheless, it does not follow that concern for self-esteem is not an
important educational value. First, much hangs on whether our response to
low self-esteem persons is mere love or something more robust like
admiration or respect. To say that we love them because of their diffidence
is not to say we find them virtuous because of it, but only that because they
are endearing, we find their faults forgivable. But if that is so, educating

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 The Educational Importance of Self-Esteem 131

for self-esteem is a perfectly legitimate aim of moral education. Second, if

low self-esteem is indeed an impediment to achievement, as I have argued,
it certainly is something to be overcome if not cured. If so, I see no reason
why educators should not do what they can to help low self-esteem
children through the process. If I am right, doing this in any case primarily
requires that we do something we ought to do anyway, namely strive to
create a school environment in which the social bases of self-esteem are
readily available to all children.6

Correspondence: Matt Ferkany, Department of Philosophy, 506 S. Kedzie

Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]

NOTES
1. For more extensive elaboration of attachment and its role in the development of self-esteem, see
Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain (Gerhardt, 2004, Part 2).
2. It is perhaps noteworthy that throughout his work, Rawls speaks of the social bases of self-respect,
not self-esteem. However, in Theory of Justice Rawls explicitly identifies self-respect and self-
esteem, acknowledging no distinction between them.
3. See, for example, James Tully’s particularly strong requirements for social esteem in Strange
Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Tully, 1995, pp. 189–191).
4. That male athletes have traditionally been favored in the school popularity contest is old news
investigated at length by James S. Coleman et al. in The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of the
Teenager and its Impact on Education (1961).
5. See, for example, Kristjánsson (2007, p. 13) and chapter 2 of my dissertation The Nature and
Importance of Self-Respect (2006).
6. I am grateful to Grant Dowell, Tamra Frei, Mary Juzwik, Hilde Lindeman and Jim Nelson for
feedback on this paper.

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