Looking (Out) for the Helpers

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.

— From The World According to Mister Rogers, p. 187.

I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately. It's not that there's been any recent "disaster" in the conventional sense. At least, I haven't heard of any significant earthquake, or crime, or other such tragedy, although I'm sure that there are things happening all over the world to people that I won't ever know about. Indeed, the irony is that the "disaster" I have in mind is not only of a more figurative kind, but it's one that has specifically targeted "helpers" who... well, if you're reading this at about the same time as I'm posting it, you probably already know what's been going on. And if you don't, it's perhaps just as well. In another month or two, this event will fade into the recesses of memory, and I can only hope that things will return to normal enough that it won't matter that I ever had a specific incident in mind. The words will hopefully stand on their own.
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Special Reminders of Value

It seems like the legacy of Mister Rogers has been on a lot of people's minds lately. I feel like most of the few posts I've been able to finish since the beginning of the new year have mentioned him, and usually that's been in response to something I've seen elsewhere on the web. Today would have been Mister Rogers' 85th birthday, and a number of websites have posted their own homages to Fred Rogers and his work. Here are just a couple.
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Mister Rogers

There's not much more to say that I haven't already said just a little over a week ago, and this site does it better than I could anyway, but it's worth noting that today marks the 10th anniversary of Fred Rogers' passing.

Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

I am extremely thankful for my friends on Facebook. They often remind me of news and events that I would otherwise allow to pass by unnoticed. That's what happened today, when one of my friends posted this news article recalling the origins of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 45 years ago today. This is the kind of anniversary I would have been sorry to have missed.
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Manifold Ministries, Ordained and Otherwise

This picture of my shelf at work, featuring the trolley from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, is one of my favorites, and I've used it both here on the blog and on my Twitter site for some time now. Over the years, I've devoted entries to a couple of the other items visible in this picture: the Transformers M&M's dispenser and the black-and-white Mickey Mouse Transformer. The other item in the picture that's of particular importance to me is the little piece of paper just to the right of the trolley. You can't really tell from the picture (even if you click on it to get a larger version), but that's a quote from The World According to Mister Rogers that I've always felt could have been written especially for me.
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Learning to Say "Thank You"

Last night, I had the honor of having dinner at Tournament House, the permanent headquarters of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association (yes, the folks who do that big parade every New Year's). I was there because my wife Michelle (who's working on her PhD in Christian Worship) was one of the guest speakers at a Development function intended to say "thank you" to those who donate money to make scholarships possible.

Michelle shared some of her own story. How she had a passion for playing the flute at the age of three, and trained as a Flute Performance major at the University of Southern California School of Music (which is quite prestigious, from what I can tell). Then, while working her "day job" (since not-yet-established musicians usually have to have one to pay the bills) at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, she found her calling take a sharp turn toward theology. Enrolling at Fuller, she worked in Financial Aid and took night classes for four years to afford classes. Even that wouldn't have been enough, but she was blessed to get a scholarship that took care of most of the difference. Then, when she determined that she was being called to do PhD work as well (enabling her to combine her musical and theological gifts), she applied for several schools, and received offers of assistance that enabled her to choose the school which she determined to be the best fit for her, without worry about how she would cover the cost of tuition. She again chose Fuller, largely on the basis of her mentor, Dr. Todd Johnson.  She would not have had this freedom—not only to attend, but to choose the best school to attend—if it weren't for the generosity of others.

Listening to Michelle's story—most of which I've naturally heard before—got me to thinking about the assistance I've gotten in going through college and seminary, myself. I have to confess that I've not been mindful enough of the generosity that enabled me to do those things. I haven't said "thank you" nearly enough.

And I really do have a lot to be thankful for. Not just for money that kept my educational debts lower than they might otherwise have been (indeed, enabling me to go to the institutions I've attended in the first place!), but also for some truly amazing opportunities that I would not have otherwise had. Last night was just one example. Even though I've lived in and around Pasadena for a dozen years now, I've never even imagined setting foot in the historic Tournament House. It was just a huge mansion that I might pass by on occasion as I drove on Orange Grove toward South Pasadena. I got to go upstairs and see pictures of all the people who have served as Grand Marshals (including personal hero Fred Rogers, who shared the honor with Bill Cosby and Art Linkletter in 2003, just a month before his passing. Even though there were three Grand Marshals that year, I like to point out that only Mister Rogers got to do the coin toss at the Rose Bowl game!), and stood next to a cabinet filled with Emmy awards given for Parade broadcasts. I haven't really done anything to deserve being here (unless you count marrying well, and even on that I'd say that itself is something to be grateful for more than something I did anything to deserve). I've been given a gift.

I don't pretend to say that everything is going "great" these days. These are still times of struggle and stress. Yet I've been blessed, too. I don't know what God is doing with my life, but I am glad for the reminder that God is doing something. I'd like to take the opportunity to say "thank you," both to God, and to all those people that God has used to help me get through my life thus far. I hope that I will be more conscious about such blessings in the future.

Depressing Times, Unlucky Ages, and Self-Esteem

When I read this article on The Atlantic's online site, I can't really say I was surprised.  I mean, I've been commenting on economic hard times for a long time now.  I work in an institution that has been hit hard, and we're still struggling to adapt to the current climate.  And I've long understood that my generation has always lived in an economic reality very different than that of the previous generation.  So, to read in the Atlantic article that "trauma... will remain heavy for quite some time" really isn't anything new.

But it's still kind of depressing.

The article is pretty far ranging.  Racial dynamics, marriage, generational shift, and more are all covered.  I can't begin to comment on it all.  Perhaps the bit that stood out the most to me is the following statement:

...those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. When you add up all the earnings losses over the years... it’s as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size.

Recognizing that the country has been struggling economically for roughly a decade already, about the length of time that I've worked full-time, that would make me one of the "unlucky ones."  The article hits that point even more when it suggests that, "for a sizeable proportion of 20- and 30-somethings, the next few years will likely be toxic."  I'm 35 now.  These guys really aren't trying to be comforting, are they?

Now, I've done the math.  If I take my wages from 10 years ago and compare them to my wages today, I find that I've averaged an increase of 3.5% per year each of those years.  Basically, I'm keeping up with historic inflation.  I'm not really gaining any ground, and it's not like my "starting point" was very high to begin with, but I'm not really losing ground, either.  It could be worse.

Another aspect of the article that struck me is the assertion that a culture of self-esteem is partially to blame:

Twenge notes that self-esteem in children began rising sharply around 1980, and hasn’t stopped since.... Twenge attributes the shift to broad changes in parenting styles and teaching methods, in response to the growing belief that children should always feel good about themselves, no matter what. As the years have passed, efforts to boost self-esteem—and to decouple it from performance—have become widespread....

Twenge writes that "self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work....  There’s an element of entitlement—they expect people to figure things out for them.”

Neither Twenge nor the article itself go so far as to blame Mister Rogers, as others have done, but there's still something about the criticism that makes me bristle.  I've already agreed that self-esteem without basis is a bad thing, but I'm simply not convinced that "performance" is the best "basis" on which a person should determine their worth.  A person is valuable because that person is a child of God.  That's not to say a person should take pride in mediocrity, or fail to work hard to achieve success, but this paragraph looks to me like an older generation trying to find something to blame in the younger generation that may not have anything to do with the actual cause of the current economic difficulty (which, no doubt, is complicated enough that anyone confronted with this suggestion would realize it's too simplistic, anyway).

Perhaps I bristle at the suggestion that I "expect people to figure things out for [me]."  I don't think I'm doing that.  I'm trying to be as creative as I know how to earn enough money to get by, and to work as hard as I have the strength to do to earn the money my job pays.  If it's not enough, is that my fault for not being imaginitve enough to try something else, or am I not working hard enough, despite putting in a full 40-hour work week at a job that has been a stable source of income in a very unstable climate? 

Perhaps it's the fault of my high self-esteem that I don't think so....

A Last Look at the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of Mister Rogers.  As such, I was thrilled to find a blog dedicated to the "Neighborhood" and to all things related to it some time back.  Today's entry gave some details of an event from this past weekend, whereby the original props for the set of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe were available for public viewing for what is all-but-certain to be the last time together. (The original blog entry link has long since vanished, but the original pictures... and more... can be found here.)

I learned this event about a few weeks ago, but knew even then that I couldn't attend.  Like "TL" at the Neighborhood Archive, "knowing this set [was] open for viewing (likely for the last time) and not being able to be there [has been] simply agonizing."  But we can't have everything.  I'm very grateful to him for posting the pictures, videos, and links on his site.  The next best thing to being there, as they say.  Most of the images themselves come from the WQED Pittsburgh page on Facebook, so feel free to drop by over there and share your thoughts and see what else they have to offer!

Mister Rogers Follow-Up

A few weeks ago, I wrote in response to a recent suggestion that Mister Rogers was somehow responsible for a rash of "entitlement" feeling among young adults who grew up being told (by Rogers and others) that they were "special" without regard to any particular thing they've done.

The following week, while I was on vacation in Northern California, I picked up The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers in a used bookstore. Despite knowing for years that Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, this book represents one of the most explicit depictions of Rogers as a man of faith that I've ever seen. It has been an encouraging read, and I highly recommend it.

I was surprised, although perhaps I shouldn't have been, to learn that the recent comments by Prof. Chance were not the first suggestion that Mister Rogers has caused children to grow up spoiled because he told them they were "special" (although, in my defense, Chance seems to have been unaware of the incident related in the book, as well). Author Amy Hollingsworth relates an article by Don Feder which appeared in the Boston Herald in 1994, which complained that "Fred Rogers advocated a philosophy of self-esteem that makes children feel good about themselves no matter how rotten their behavior or how dull their intellects" (p. xxiv. Note that the quotation is from Hollingsworth's book, not from the original article by Feder).

Hollingsworth's reply echoed my own of a few weeks ago: "right argument, wrong target. I agree that the cult of self-esteem has gone too far. What I disagree with is that Mister Rogers is a proponent" (p. xxv). She then proceeded to explain how Rogers' own life demonstrated his value for good behavior and hard work ("with degrees in music, theology, and psychology," p. xxv).

Returning to the issue of promoting self-esteem later in her book, Hollingsworth quotes Rogers' response to critics such as Feder:

"Now self-esteem is certainly not brought about by people saying that a child has done something wonderful when that person doesn't believe it....

"Self-esteem doesn't come from a child hearing something that's not true about him or her. If an adult does not believe that the child has done a good job with something, well, it's not the least bit helpful to say so.

"Of course if we do believe that a child has done a wonderful thing, then the best thing we can do is to tell him or her, 'Hey, that was really special. You know you did that so much better than you did the last time, and I'm really proud of you.'

"I often sing, 'I'm proud of you! I'm proud of you!' Don't you with your children?"

I nod yes; I even use his version.

"But I would hope that you wouldn't say 'I'm proud of you' if your child has done something that might be hurtful to him or her or to somebody else, because that just doesn't help. I guess we're coming right back to the very first thing [Rogers and Hollingsworth] talked about, and that's truthfulness--you, know, being ourselves and allowing somebody to share in that." (pp. 65-66)

There are many ways in which I wish I were more like Mister Rogers, although I'm sure he himself would discourage me or anyone else from trying to imitate him too closely. Mister Rogers was always an advocate for helping people be the unique individuals they truly were. Still, I often wish I had his easy-going demeanor, able to deal with all sorts of people and problems with kindness and respect. I'm hoping to get a job working with children in the not-too-distant future, and feel certain that Mister Rogers had the most important things right. Children are people, too. Not just the people of the future, but people of tremendous worth right now. I hope to be such an encouragement to any children potentially in my care as Mister Rogers was to so many through his television ministry.

Blaming Mister Rogers?

I was introduced to this article via another blog (but he did something rather different with the issues raised), and knew that I would have to make some kind of response, but also knew that to do so would be fairly difficult.

Disclaimers first: Mister Rogers has been a long-time hero of mine, and I have to be honest in admitting that I may not be able to be completely objective in responding to attacks on his life's work (of course, I also don't believe that total objectivity is humanly possible in the first place, but at least I'm admitting a known bias).

Now, unless you've already clicked that first link, you're no doubt wondering what's happened to cause such a quandry. After all, Mister Rogers' has been accused (falsely) of things before, but this is a bit different. Here's the gist of the article:

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

I certainly don't want to say that I disagree with everything Prof. Chance is saying. The presenting issue: that of students asking to get a higher grade (with no apparent evidence that they've done anything to deserve such a grade), is one I have tremendous sympathy for. I've said often to my family and friends that I would be a very unpopular assignment-grader, since I have little sympathy for students who turn in work late or otherwise try to "get away with" anything in order to get a higher grade than they truly deserve. Similarly, I often complain about the sense of "entitlement" that many in our world seem to have.

But to blame Mister Rogers for this situation strikes me as unhelpful in the extreme. Because one very popular children's show host encouraged children to feel good about themselves, and placed self-esteem at a high level, we're supposed to believe that children grew up with an inflated sense of self-worth leading them to feel entitled to things they do not, in fact, deserve? And I definitely wonder at the argument the article makes against having children call adults by their first names. Although Mister Rogers is not directly implicated in this (and, in fact, how many kids do you know who call him "Fred"?), the context of the article would seem to put the blame for this practice on his shoulders, too. I would almost write this article off as some poorly executed satire if it weren't for the response Fox News has given to it.

Certainly parents should encourage children to find value in hard work and excellence. And, certainly, children should be taught that they won't always get what they want, or even what they think they deserve. With due deference to the "certain unalienable rights" that the Declaration of Independence argues that all humans are "endowed by their Creator" with, there really isn't much that people should argue that have any right to if they haven't earned it.

But one of those rights that people should have is the right to feel good about themselves, just for being the unique person that they are, whoever that is. As Christians, we believe that God created each person, and finds value in every one of us. Although Mister Rogers was a largely secular figure, he was also an ordained Presbyterian minister, and no doubt was influenced by such a belief. Not only can't I find any place to fault Mister Rogers for trying to instill children with a healthy self-esteem, but I think he should be praised for it! For all the value of encouraging people to work hard, and to triumph over adversity, there are many, many people out there who will never achieve the greatness that they're capable of, simply because they've been taught that they're not worth the effort. If such people could be taught to find value in themselves, and then taught to work hard to achieve great things, imagine what could happen! But to argue that we should teach kids that they aren't of any value unless they've done something to earn it is a recipe for disaster.

So, I say, hats off to Mister Rogers! Thanks for helping us to know that we are people of worth! May our achievements be a tribute to the value you saw in us!