I must tangent on this chapter. The idea of coddling children/people for the sake of self-esteem is a personal peeve of mine. My tangent is going to agree with Baurlein.
I'm not going to suggest that we never tell children/college students that they do a good job...when they actually do. But Stupnisky et al. (2007) suggests that self-esteem is one of the most researched topics in psychology. This vast storehouse of knowledge about it has yielded little in the academic impact of self-esteem on academic achievement.
"'We need to stop endlessly repeating, "You're special," and having children repeat that back. Kids are self-centered enough already." (pg. 192) According to Piaget, children are supposed to grow out of egocentrism at the end of preschool (Gjerde, Block, & Block, 1986). We don't need to bring it back superficially later in life.
I found a brilliant article (Perhaps to add credence to the argument of Baurlein, the article is a peer reviewed study that I retrieved from the PsycINFO database) by Stupnisky, Renaud, Perry, Ruthig, Haynes, and Clifton (2007) that suggested self-esteem is actually a product of college student academic achievement, not the other way around. Furthermore, Stupnisky et al. (2007) purported that perceived control is a better predictor of first year college student GPA than self-esteem. An example of the effect of perceived control in academic achievement would be when a first year college student, presented with the crazy new environment conceptualizes the new world as "low control," and therefore blames the first failure on an exam on the nutty professor or the ridiculously difficult course material, instead of internalizing the responsibility. This makes sense to me. They further suggest that this attribution to uncontrollable circumstances would spiral the student into apathy and depression (in some sense). I feel like I've observed or known some students who fall into this, even myself at times. I would like to explore further if this is a new development in our culture since the boom of people going to college or if it is a natural development in life. The concept relates very well with the idea of locus of control, which determines whether an individual attributes events to internal or external causes.
On a slightly different topic...
I am paying for college because I expect to be educated by people and resources that I recognize as having more experience and knowledge than I do. I could stay home for free and chat online with my peers or blog if all I wanted to do was brainstorm with people on the same intellectual level as myself. It doesn't hurt my self-esteem if professors tell me to reconsider what I think I know or present something completely different. That's why I'm here--to learn from the best. Once I've collected the information I'm paying for, I'll explore on my own based on that previous knowledge: the premise and philosophy of science, never start at the beginning if you've got something to base it on. So...go...Baurlein. But I do find it hard to believe that some college classes are entirely student dominated. I would expect that the classes at least have some faculty involvement. I have never encountered a professor who makes me think I know more than him or her and I would hope not too many of them exist...