I heard of a recent end-of-term school award ceremony, during which an incredible 1,500 certificates were handed out to the school’s 250 S1s. These were for a wide variety of achievements, from progress in literacy to coming third in the long jump. Every child a winner.

As a never-ending chain of pupils took to the stage, the proud parents in the audience sat continuously clapping in the sweltering assembly hall for almost an hour, the youngsters’ actual achievements blurred by the sheer volume of success.

What the school was staging represented the last gasp of the self-esteem movement, a concept that naturally enough came to life in California in the late 1960s. It was later vigorously supported by a powerful US congressman, John Vasconcellos, who didn’t care if the scientific evidence didn’t match his own personal belief in the power of believing in yourself.

The idea that there was a direct correlation between how we felt about ourselves and how well we did in life had enough apparent logic to be gleefully grasped by parents and teachers trying to solve the problem of poor attainment.

However, as we didn’t want children to feel bad by either seeing red ink in their jotter or failing a test, what we ended up with was “two stars and a wish”, as well as grade inflation. And instead of a group of individuals with unlimited potential, self-esteem has created a generation that contains a mixture of easily offended snowflakes and narcissists who need to repeatedly update their image on social media to receive constant positive affirmation from their peer group to feel okay about themselves.

The search for quick fixes

The rise and fall of the self-esteem movement is important today because we don’t seem to have learned from this lesson. There is an ongoing search for the next silver bullet to replace self-esteem, so time and resources are invested into growth mindset, mindfulness and whichever plausible self-help publication can be adapted to suit the classroom. While each of these education tools will probably help some of the pupils some of the time and shouldn’t be ignored, we should be wary of wholesale adoption of any of these concepts.

What each quick fix has in common is the perception that if we can change our way of thinking then academic, social or financial success will come to us - ignoring how intelligent or hardworking we are, or our social background.

It is the third element, inequality, that has the biggest effect on academic and life-long success, but few political parties ever suggest raising taxes to fund social change. So we tinker with the next big idea rather than grasping the nettle of properly supporting families to escape poverty.

Gordon Cairns is a teacher of English in Scotland