We’ve been tossing around the term ’self-esteem’ for a long time in education and psychology, but what does it really mean? Is it the same thing as confidence? Can it be taught or improved? Let’s start with a basic definition of the term.

At this point, let’s agree that self-esteem is ‘the way in which a person judges their own value.’ What that means, basically, is that if a person judges himself to be without value, he has poor self-esteem. On the other hand, if he feels he’s very valuable, he exhibits good, or healthy, self-esteem.

Keeping that in mind, let’s move on to the way that poor or healthy self-esteem predicts whether a person will be successful in life. It may surprise you to know that recent research has raised questions about the beliefs that formed the ’self-esteem-based education movement’ of the past twenty five years.

Starting in the 1980s in California, anti-drug programs, programs to reduce teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates, and an abundance of classroom curricula have been based on the notion that children with good self-image are less likely to give in to peer pressure.

The proponents of the self-esteem movement believe children’s self-esteem is most influenced by negative early childhood experiences such as abuse. Many states followed suit and made huge investments in bolstering the self-esteem of school children through education programs, so that they would become responsible adults.

But recent studies don’t support that notion. They actually found little evidence that people who registered high on the self-esteem scale are any more likely to resist peer pressure or to achieve success.

What I mean by that is that, according to a large study conducted by Brown University, an increase in self-esteem seems to follow successful completion of a goal. Put another way, a person begins to feel better about himself only when he begins to succeed.

Here’s the other commonly-held belief that may have been shattered: since the 80s, educators and psychologists have followed the notion that self-esteem is based largely on the information they receive from their parents, teachers and others close to them. In contrast, the respondents in the 2003 study, and others since, seemed to base their feelings of personal value on how well they measure up in society at large.

Said another way, one’s social values, or what one’s society determines to be valuable, create the basis for whether or not they feel that they, themselves, have an internal sense of value. For instance, if the society in which one lives places a high value on knowledge, and they have the capability to study and learn easily, then self-esteem increases as ‘measure-up’ to that social value.

All of which leads us to refine our original definition of self-esteem, based on the information we’ve just discussed. Try framing your thoughts around this new definition as you continue to consider the basis of self-esteem: it is how valuable a person feels when gauged against the values of his or her society.

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