A student internalizes messages and that some of those messages may not be helpful for their self-esteem and eventual life goals.
Everyone has built and progressively updated an image of themselves, as well as have formed some kind of ideal picture of themselves. Obvious, there is absolutely no reason for any of this to peculiarly well articulated and explicit, although you can suspect that it is very useful to add details and depth to this picture. The ideal is also elusive for the obvious reason that no one who is even remotely honest with themselves can claim to be the man or the woman they could be. That's my problem with the "self-esteem" crowd. They think that if you pet people in the back, they will come to see themselves in a better light and move on to become very productive. This makes sense as far as moral is concerned, but it doesn't make sense when it comes to the self-image of people. The reason is that if you are far from your ideal and you know that you're not doing much of anything to get there, you are not wrong to not be happy with yourself. The "self-esteem" crowd has everything backwards.
You don't feel good and then get busy doing something productive on account that you feel good. It's the other way around. There is a bunch of things that you should be doing per your own judgement of what you should be doing. You know it and you also know that you're cheating at your own game, breaking your own rules when you do not do it. The way you stop looking down at yourself is simple: convince yourself to do at least a few of the things you think you should be doing -- or, perhaps, stop doing things you think you should not be doing. If you do this even for just a few days, you'll slowly earn your own respect.
Students don't need to be congratulated
ad nauseam. If you face challenges forthrightly, if you get down to business and try to overcome the obstacle, you will learn to respect yourself just as will others. And if you fail at some point, getting back up on your feet and finding a way to either tackle of circumvent the problems that go you down in the first place is what you should be doing. There is nothing that can make you feel like you could conquer the whole world than seeing yourself take a hit and keep going after what you want.
[T]hat street-level bureaucrats may do their job in a biased or unfair manner, contrary to the goals of your legislature, the United States Congress, or federal courts.
The issue is that I am not a racist: I don't think that people are biased because the tone of their skin doesn't match the tone of the skin of people around them.
I have a friend with whom I play tennis over the summer. We often meet up and talk off the court. He is considerably older than me, but he's such a wonderful friend. Anyhow, when he was younger and his kids were studying in high school, he would have kids from the whole neighborhood over and teach them about mathematics, history and litterature, helping them out with their homework and their assignments. He happens to be black, some of the kids happened to be asian and others happened to be white. It never occured to anyone that this was a problem.
Frankly, comments like those made by the radical left are disgusting. And mind you, they will dump all over any ethnic group as soon as it benefits them. They're power hungry authoritarian lunatics.