Self esteem and starting school
The later a child begins school, the higher self-esteem will be later in life.That's one implication of a University of Alberta study of the effect of enrolling children in Grade 1 as early as age 5.5 years or as late as 6.5 years.
Of course, the report in Science Daily doesn't say how the researchers defined or measured self-esteem, a notoriously difficult concept to operationalize (see Dec. 21 blog entry below). And one of the researchers himself concedes that other studies suggest "direct efforts to boost children's self-esteem are largely fruitless."
The "relative age effect," to which the study results are attributed, seems intuitively correct.
Studying resilience--kids who overcome negative odds, as reported in the Jan. 17 issue of Time--just seems much more fruitful to me.
But I still wonder if intentionally teaching the cognitive skills involved in hoping--goal setting, agency thinking ("I can reach that goal"), pathways thinking ("Here are some different ways I can reach that goal") and goal-adaptation ("If I can't reach that goal, I could modify it or try for these goals instead")--wouldn't prove more fruitful in the long run than attempting to influence how children "feel" about themselves or delaying the start of school.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Thursday, January 13, 2005
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