* <<JA5SZ3YG>> It's fun to be smart?
Created: 11/18/2017, 12:45:39 PM
There's a pre-school workbook sitting on the table in front of me,
and in giant letters on the back is the phrase
IT'S FUN TO BE SMART!
I'm seeing this everywhere these days. Amy Poehler has a video
channel called Smart Girls Have More Fun; another popular YouTube
channel is Joe Hanson's It's Okay To Be Smart.
The corollary for all of these is obvious: it's dull to be stupid.
Stupid girls live lives of drudgery and boredom. It's not okay to be
stupid.
But who is smart? And who is stupid?
I'm sympathetic to the intent of the being-smart-is-better crowd, but
the messaging on this is all wrong. Smart, like beautiful, or funny,
is a qualitative term, not a quantitative one*. Children get their
sense of whether or not they are smart, in large part, from the
evaluations of their parents, teachers, and peers. What is the
message of the smart-is-better crowd to a child that feels stupid?
Saying that it's more fun or acceptable to be smart only helps
reinforce the confidence of people who, deserving or not, feel smart,
and diminishes the outlook of the children who, however bright they
are, doubt their own intelligence.
* How would we feel about a YouTube channel called Beautiful
Girls Have More Fun? Or It's Okay To Be Beautiful?
What we should be saying instead is that it's fun to think! It's fun
to use your brain! It's fun to learn!
Learning, thinking, studying – these are ACTIVITES that anyone can
do, regardless of what their self-image tells them about their own
intelligence, and being an active learner MOVES you forward. Do we
want children to simple feel smart, or feel stupid? Or do we want
them to feel empowered, and to know that they're not stuck one way or
the other. We want them to know that active learners can surpass
their more idle peers, regardless of how gifted those peers may seem
– that being smart isn't as .
--
Excerpted from:
PUBLIC NOTES (H)
http://alph.laemeur.com/txt/PUBNOTES-H
©2017 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <
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