Compliments, Praise and Insincerity

I was reading through Cool Cat's great post on the fact, it seems, according to New York Times,  that college students these days would rather have a compliment than a pizza or... get this, sex.

Now, on the surface, I guess I do agree with Cool Cat about the boost we all need (whether as the educated or the educator) to our self-esteems... except that last night as I was heading off, sniffling (got the worst cold and cough ever) I started wondering...

The reason that Pizza is no longer a treat is that it's so accessible.

You can get a pizza anytime day or night.   You can buy them at the Supermarket.

I remember,  growing up in Antigua,  that there was only one Pizza place on the opposite side of the island and it was about a 45 mins drive away.  We had to beg and beg Daddy to take us there  - maybe he agreed around three times a year and once we got there and got out of the car, we ordered our very own pizzas and cokes...  Wow, it was all so incredibly tasty!    My mouth even still waters for that particular Pizza though truth be told that nowadays due to all the Carbs+Chemicals, I actually don't eat Pizza very often or even want to... but ah, that Pizza...

Except it's not the Pizza, is it?


It's the longing and the delay in getting what I wanted.

Like Cool Cat, I agree that cheap compliments aren't helpful and that kids can spot a fake however I really wasn't comfortable with her call to give out sincere compliments once every class period/ once a day to a colleague... because the very adding of a time to this makes it a task and not a spontaneous truism.

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that sincere praise takes time and energy and real thought.  It must mean something. Compliments shouldn't be abused and made smaller through frequency and over-indulgence.

They should, I reckon, be given out when they say in their subtexts:

I watched  you for a while you know and I noticed what you've done and how you improved; You know what, I saw you grow; I saw you change and how you have very much blossomed.  You made me proud; I learned from you.

Personally, in general, I'm just not a big fan of people who tell me how great I am, especially if they do this repeatedly, as inevitably (through hard-experience) I know that's what really happening is that they've read and made their bible: How To Win Friends and Influence People and now they've got some kind of warped mental database of standardized compliments which they pay to people - anyone at all - because, pretty much, they're just trying to get something from them.   

(And it works (80%?) of the time! )

Oooh!
How cynical is that?
Sorry.

Are we all suckers 
or is it that as we get older 
we lose the ability to spot fakes?! :-((.

Also, I tend to find... how do I say this, I tend to find that people who have been over-complimented  by parents/ school-friends and then, if having achieved any sort of postion in life (boss, actor, etc)... they can then wind up generally having a very displaced view of themselves, their importance in the world and they can/may use this self-view to abuse others they deem as lesser.   

Over-self-esteem is almost as bad as low self-esteem.

Anyway, I'll wrap this post up by saying that I do hope we don't make the next generation of students cynical of compliments by praising them too much, too often, too insincerely only because this sort of research may leave us feeling that we're not good teachers if we don't do it often enough.

I really hope we can be balanced, as some things in life, in my opinion, really should remain worth working for.

Worth desiring.


Useful links

• New York Times
• The role of pride in the Business English Language Classroom  
• Don't Eat That Mashmallow!