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 lea

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!