CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR S.C. TEACHER CADET COURSE | EXPERIENCING EDUCATION, TENTH EDITION
Theme I: Experiencing Learning
Unit 1: Awareness and Reflection
Self-Worth: The Pot Nobody Watches, Page 1 of 2
Virginia Satir
When I was a little girl, I lived on a farm in Wisconsin. On our back porch was a huge black
iron pot, which had lovely rounded sides and stood on three legs. My mother made her own
soap, so, for part of the year, the pot was filled with soap. When threshing crews came through
in the summer, we filled the pot with stew. At other times, my father used it to store manure
for my mother’s flower beds. We all came to call it the “3-S pot.” Whenever we wanted to
use the pot, we were faced w ith two questions: “What is the pot now full of, and how full is
it?”
Long afterward, when people would tell me of their feelings of self-worth – whether they felt
full or empty, dirty, or even “cracked” – I would think of that old pot. One day several years
ago, a family was sitting in my office and its members were trying to explain to one another
how they felt about themselves. I remembered the black pot and told them the story. Soon
the members of the family were talking about their own individual “pots,” whether they contained feelings of worth or of guilt, shame, or uselessness.
So, when I say “pot,” I mean self-worth or self-esteem.
I am convinced that the crucial factor in what happens both inside people and between people
is the picture of the individual worth that each person carries around with him – his pot.
Integrity, honesty, responsibility, compassion, love – all flow easily from the people whose pot
is high. They feel that they matter, that the world is a better place because they are here. They
have faith in their own competence. They are able to ask others for help, but they believe they
can make their own decisions and are their own best resource. Appreciating their own worth,
they are ready to see and respect the worth of others. They radiate trust and hope. They don’t
have rules against anything they feel. They accept all of themselves as human.
Other people, however, spend most of their lives in a low-pot condition. Because they feel
they have little worth, they expect to be cheated, stepped on, and deprecated by others. Expecting the worst, they invite it and usually get it. To defend themselves, they hide behind a
wall of distrust and sink into the terrible human state of loneliness and isolation. Thus separated from other people, they become apathetic, indifferent toward themselves and those
around them. It is hard for them to see, hear, or think clearly, and, therefore, they are more
prone to step on and deprecate others.
I am convinced that there are no genes to carry the feeling of worth. It is learned. And the
family is where it is learned. You learned to feel high pot or low pot in the family your parents
created. And your children will learn it in your family.
An infant coming into the world has no past, no experience in handling himself, no scale on
which to judge his own worth. He must rely on the experiences he has with the people around
him and the messages they give him about his worth as a person. For the first four or five
years, the child’s pot is formed by the family almost exclusively. After he starts school, other
influences come into play, but the family remains important throughout his adolescence. Outside forces tend to reinforce the feelings of worth or worthlessness that he has learned at
home: the high-pot child can weather many failures in school or among peers; the low-pot
child can experience many successes, yet feel a gnawing doubt about his own value.
PAGE I – 1 - 14