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> it's precisely because kids are so smart and imbued with so much potential, that I have to call them out. If you're providing them with the tools to learn fr

> it's precisely because kids are so smart and imbued with so much potential, that I have to call them out. If you're providing them with the tools to learn from, I'm all for it. When I'm learning something, I want to be told when I mess up, but the best advice also comes with an explanation, or at least counter evidence to examine. Just saying "WRONG!" and "You think you know this? Bah, you're an idiot" all the time makes me less likely to learn from you specifically AND less likely to learn in general. There's nothing wrong and a lot right with giving these people with little experience the benefit of your own, to preventing them from making mistakes. We just need to make sure that's what we're doing. While the teen years will (literally) naturally involve a lot of questioning authority and testing boundaries and establishing a pecking order, I think we've magnified this by blaming the teenager rather than their lack of experience, by blaming their attitude while ignoring our own. Every "why do I have to..." and "Can't we just..." and "this isn't FAIR!" is an opportunity to engage them. Every "because I said so" and "you don't know what you're talking about" that involves no other data is teaching them there's no point in consulting us. Put another way - I don't think most teens think they know everything. They just know little else, and too often we're telling them that they think they know everything, while not showing that they don't.

stcredzero 9y ago
Just saying "WRONG!" and "You think you know this? Bah, you're an idiot" all the time makes me less likely to learn from you specifically AND less likely to learn in general. Right. That's such a bad teaching strategy, it's more like a technique for fighting education. Every "why do I have to..." and "Can't we just..." and "this isn't FAIR!" is an opportunity to engage them. That is profound, actually. I may indeed use those as teaching moments. If my teen-aged kids can convincingly argue the other side, I might just raise their score a point, credit their account, then give them a chance to think out how they can make at least a part of their goal happen after all. Every "because I said so" Adults need to remember that "because I said so" only flies with little kids. (And even then not necessarily.) It certainly doesn't fly with adults, and teens are kids becoming adults. But all that said, when someone brings up an idea with merit containing a potentially mental-model revising observation, there are two kinds of people in the world: People who consider the idea sincerely, and people who refuse to do so. In that case, be the smart one!

stcredzero 9y ago

Just saying "WRONG!" and "You think you know this? Bah, you're an idiot" all the time makes me less likely to learn from you specifically AND less likely to learn in general. Right. That's such a bad teaching strategy, it's more like a technique for fighting education. Every "why do I have to..." and "Can't we just..." and "this isn't FAIR!" is an opportunity to engage them. That is profound, actually. I may indeed use those as teaching moments. If my teen-aged kids can convincingly argue the other side, I might just raise their score a point, credit their account, then give them a chance to think out how they can make at least a part of their goal happen after all. Every "because I said so" Adults need to remember that "because I said so" only flies with little kids. (And even then not necessarily.) It certainly doesn't fly with adults, and teens are kids becoming adults. But all that said, when someone brings up an idea with merit containing a potentially mental-model revising observation, there are two kinds of people in the world: People who consider the idea sincerely, and people who refuse to do so. In that case, be the smart one!