Self-esteem

This coming Sunday we will be looking at a surprising secret.  What is that surprising secret?  Well it certainly isn't self-esteem.  David Wells writing about our culture says that we have a bloated sense of human capacity.
As I have said before I taught Mathematics in high school, college and university.  Amazingly many of our students have an exalted view of their ability to do mathematics but in reality they do poorly.  In contrast the Japanese students have a very low opinion of their ability to do mathematics but are much better than North American students.
Thirty years of the self-esteem movement has told young people that they were perfect in every way but we have an entire generation with no sense of inadequacy.
In 1980 in a study of over 300 UK newspapers there was not one single reference to self-esteem.  By 1986 this number had risen to three.  In 1990 there was over 103 and a decade later in 2000 there was a staggering 3328 references.  How many do you think there would be in 2014?
So what is the surprising secret?  I will tell you this much, it is not self-esteem.