GMAT Essays (AWA)

"If parents want to prepare their children to succeed in life, teaching the children self-discipline is more
important than teaching them self-esteem."
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with
reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
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Many people believe that self-discipline is an ultimate tool that will help one getting all success in life. On the other hand self-esteem help keeps a person maintain integrity without which no success has any meaning. In my essay below I will provide argument that favor the later while refuting the former.

If there is one character trait whose benefits are endorsed by traditional and progressive educators alike, it may well be self-discipline. Just about everyone wants students to override their unconstructive impulses, resist temptation, and do what needs to be done. True, this disposition is commended to us with particular fervor by the sort of folks who sneer at any mention of self-esteem and deplore what they insist are today's lax standards. But even people who don't describe themselves as conservative agree that imposing discipline on children (either to improve their behavior or so they'll apply themselves to their studies) isn't nearly as desirable as having children discipline themselves. It's appealing to teachers - indeed, to anyone in a position of relative power - if the people over whom they have authority will do what they're supposed to do on their own. The only question is how best to accomplish this.

Self-discipline might be defined as marshalling one's willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable. While I readily admit that it's good to be able to persevere at worthwhile tasks -- and that some students seem to lack this capacity -- I want to suggest that the concept is actually problematic in three fundamental ways. To inquire into what underlies the idea of self-discipline is to uncover serious misconceptions about motivation and personality, controversial assumptions about human nature, and disturbing implications regarding how things are arranged in a classroom or a society. Let's call these challenges psychological, philosophical, and political, respectively.

If our main goal for students is just to get them to complete whatever tasks, and obey whatever rules, they're given, then self-discipline is undeniably a useful trait. But if we're interested in the whole child - if, for example, we'd like our students to be psychologically healthy - then it's not at all clear that self-discipline should enjoy a privileged status compared to self esteem. In some contexts, it may not be desirable at all.

Even beyond the vision of human nature, a commitment to self-discipline may reflect a tacit allegiance to philosophical conservatism with its predictable complaint that our society -- or its youth -- has forgotten the value of hard work, the importance of duty, the need to accept personal responsibility, and so on. And this condemnation is typically accompanied by a prescriptive vision that endorses self-denial and sarcastically dismisses talk about self-esteem.

It makes sense for us to take a closer look at the concept and the ways in which it's applied in our schools. Aside from its philosophical underpinnings and political impact, there are reasons to be skeptical about anything that might produce overcontrol. Some children who look like every adult's dream of a dedicated student may in reality be anxious, driven, and motivated by a perpetual need to feel better about themselves, rather than by anything resembling curiosity.