Praise

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

This article is interesting for many reasons. Here are a few:

- It blames Nathaniel Brandon for the "self esteem is really really important" movement, which hates competition. I met him. Small world. You might think a libertarian would like competition more. Oh well. I didn't know it was his fault.

- In a study, young children act very differently in reaction to *one sentence* of praise. That's an amazing amount of flexibility to be able to change one's self-image so easily.

- Five year old children have daily math and phonics homework expected of them. Ugh!

- Parents say things like, "I can't stop praising my kid so much. He'll feel awful." But what actually happens when the parent tries to stop is that the *parent* feels bad. (Why limit praise? Because most of it was non-specific and said without regard for its truth.)