Davidson And Jean Twenge Critical Analysis

To begin with, it is extremely important that our educational system stops promoting false confidence and allowing students to unlearn their current outlook on life. Both Davidson and Twenge touch upon the flaws in the current education system. As Davidson describes, “Confidence in your ability to learn is confidence in your ability to unlearn, to switch assumptions or methods or partnerships in order to do better. This is true not only for you, as an individual, but for whole institutions” (Davidson 67). Davidson believes true confidence, allows one to not only learn important ideas, but also forsake the ideas that may harm him or her from reaching a goal; she also mentions that this notion does not apply just to an individual person, but also applies

However, too many students are so self-focused that they cannot unlearn their selfish behaviors for the sake of finding the best-suited solution that can be achieved through collaborative thinking. In addition to Davidson, Jean Twenge also notices this pattern and she labels it as “narcissism”. As Twenge explains, “Because the school programs emphasize being ‘special’ rather than encouraging friendships, we may be training an army of little narcissists instead of raising kids’ self-esteem” (Twenge 504). Twenge obviously believes that school programs are trying too hard to preserve a child’s self-esteem instead of actually helping them to build skills that would help them. Twenge mentions that instead of making them feel “special”, schools should focus more on “encouraging friendships” so that they can be a little less narcissistic and self-focused. In such an environment, children would be taught collaborative thinking is more important than they might think because it helps everyone succeed together, which helps the individual as