Self Esteem and Education

There has been a vocal group in the US proposing that the solution to education problems is to raise the "self-esteem" of students. According to Ralph R. Reiland, this might be backfiring:

Only 6 percent of Korean eighth-graders expressed confidence in their math skills, compared with 39 percent of eighth-graders in the United States, according to the latest annual study on education by the Brown Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The problem is that the surveyed Korean students are better at math than the American students.

Hat tip: Rush.