Schadenfreude

How should I feel when I see someone lose? This is a concern for us all and a particularly hard thing for students to come to terms with. The well-being I have been pushing tells me that empathy and understanding should be something that I push at my students as coping strategies. However, I found this interesting video on the Discovery news site giving a slightly different viewpoint.

Essentially it explains why sometimes we enjoy seeing people 'fail'. The term 'schadenfreude' tends to explain the emotion. It comes from the German terms 'schaden = harm or damage and freude = joy'. If it is a natural emotion as outlined, then maybe it should only apply to certain situations and not so much to schools.

Have you ever wondered why we all take such joy from seeing teams lose? But why do we do this? Well, it tends to be a byproduct of the win-loss mentality that is part of our society. We tend to overlook the self-esteem aspect that comes with praising winners and ignoring losers. Praise enhances the esteem of the winner and the non-praise (ignoring) or offering platitudes to the 'loser' has the reverse effect. I see students constantly exposed to this and begin building up a "resentment" (or jealousy) against those who are seen or perceived as 'consistent winners'. I have included a quote from Jeanna Bryner below that was part of an online article in Live Science December 09, 2011, which details the results of a study conducted by Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"Participants with low self-esteem were again more likely to experience schadenfreude, and also more likely to feel threatened by the high-achieving student. However, those who had been self-affirmed were less likely than those who hadn't to reap pleasure when reading about the other student's academic slip." 

This feeling tends to be overtly present during 'College Application and Acceptances season' and we continue to wonder why we have a poison attitude permeating a group? 
Is it really such a surprise when we continue to promote 'win-loss'?

The pressures on winners

In this blog, I am in no way judging individuals as I also appreciate that throw-away lines and misunderstandings by students occur far too often. But I also know that in Hong Kong (and I'm sure in all other places) we live in a very competitive and demanding society which must have flow-on effects to the students.

I think that the greatest pressure on my students to be a winner comes from outside. Society and the parents greatly influence the attitudes of our students, and I wonder what happens at home. Competition and the 'win-loss" aspect is overt rather than covert in every student's life. This weighs heavily on their minds and it seems to be creating a generation of people for whom the moral and ethical issues are becoming secondary in the push to win.

The amazing part of this is that it starts early and continues throughout their whole experience. Our school is a "pressure cooker" in many ways, there is a high parental expectation of success and this I think is evident both at school and outside of school. We see this on occasions and it usually takes the form of unexpected behaviour patterns.

I think that one of the first casualties of the pressure to win is honesty in the wider sense of the word. The honesty to themselves is one thing that seems to be lost early, as they feel they must make other people happy as their top priority. It seems to me that this external expectation to win takes over. Early this year, I had a younger student engage in an unethical  practice that was designed to maximise her score in a task. This came as a complete shock to me as she is a competent student with good skills and a substantial knowledge base. The reason turned out to be a perceived parental expectation. I spent time discussing this with her and know that she did not repeat her 'mistake'.

Its not new news, and this article from Stanford tells me that it is widespread, and I have included it for you to read.

I wonder how many other students "think" they have to resort to similar tactics to 'win'?
I wonder how many students slipped through and now see this type of behaviour as acceptable and part of their strategy to win?

School Presentation Days

School Presentation Days

Last week, not only did I witness the presentation day, but I also officiated and participated. A group of year 7 students eagerly awaited as I read out the lucky "winners" of an assortment of prizes. They dutifully applauded and wished the recipients well and it was all made more surreal because of this. However, it did point out to me one important fact - society perpetuates the idea of gaining and accumulating achievements. It also seems to ensure that winners are celebrated and the 'losers' are expected to watch and applaud. For the sake of this discussion, I will refer to any who did not receive an award as a loser. 

It seems to me after all the years teaching, its a few more than 30 now, I should not be surprised. I know that there will be 'late bloomers' within the group. All year I have been preaching the import of having a growth mindset and then resorting to this seemed an about face.  I also know full well that there will be all sorts of pressures on each and every one of the faces that I was looking at.

But with all of the talk of lifelong learning, I still find it amazing the way we celebrate achievement.  It prompted me to resort to twitter

Society seems to praise winners and look down at 'losers'. I'm sure that it is the same worldwide, but I wonder about the effects - both short and long term?

I did preface the awarding process with a comment about the growth I had witnessed during the year - physical, emotional and academic. I also wonder if that was seen by most of the students as genuine or even meaningful?