Reply to GDS...is it as good as its reputation?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe the high schoolers are insecure because their expectations were so high after elementary and middle school at GDS.  It's great to encourage kids in alternate careers and to follow their dreams, but I do think the kind of confidence GDS seeks to build is not good in the long-term.  Real self-confidence comes from struggling for success and overcoming obstacles. Just being told you're the best over time does not do that.  A friend of mine attended two different accepted students events a couple years ago -- GDS and SFS.  She said she was surprised at how "special" the GDS students made themselves out to be.  The SFS students, she said, were more modest in their demeanor and very willing to talk of their stumbles and failures.  She described it as the difference between long-term confidence and short-term, feel good confidence.  That description made an impression on me,[/quote]

You don't really know anything about what kind of confidence either school builds "long-term."  You've got a secondhand impression based on one event.
Nor do you seem to know what kids are being told during school -- "you can do anything" is very different from "you are the best."  It's a message not about being special but about being human -- and about recognizing, despite many suggestions to the contrary, that you have agency and can make choices.  Throughout their years at GDS, kids learn of hundreds (maybe thousands) of people who have accomplished something worthwhile.  They have different accomplishments, different personalities, and different stories.  What they probably all have in common is that, at some point, each person had to blaze part of his or her own trail.  That's not a pat-yourself-on-the-back message.  That's a get-off-your-ass-and-do-something-praiseworthy message.  Which, in the short-term might well induce anxiety.  Especially when other forces in your environment are telling you that it's crucial that you get into a top college so that you can get into a top grad school so that you don't end up downwardly mobile and when there are so many things you have (or want) to do that you don't have much time to dream or discover.[/quote]

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