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Too Many Kids Quit Science Because They Don't Think They're Smart

205 points by tokenadult 12y ago

mtbottle 12y ago
> When students thought of their intelligence as a thing that’s just fixed, they were vulnerable. They were not willing to take on challenges that might test their intelligence, and they weren’t resilient when they came into obstacles. And this is also why so many gifted children become mediocre adults.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  The demographic of Mensa members is highly-intelligent non-contributors. Early life (childhood) of praise and 'successes' turned into something harder; they perceive it as failure and back away. That's my take anyway.
- Retric 12y ago
  I suspect a huge factor is people being smart enough to avoid the fame/money trap. If you can trivially get a 40-45 hour a week 100+k job that's reasonably pleasant shooting for the stars is far less appealing.
  - a_c_s 12y ago
    I know plenty of brilliant people who are now unemployed or severely underemployed (working minimum wage retail jobs despite having a college degree). Despite being academically gifted, they haven't found their way to careers that match their abilities. I haven't been able to put my finger on what exactly it is that causes these people to "get lost" on their way, but it is common enough that I think we need to be doing something differently with regards to gifted & talented education in the USA.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Maybe a basic guaranteed income, so a physics PhD doesn't have to drive a bus to eat. Then they could, I don't know, work on physics!
      - akmiller 12y ago
        Absolutely! We are way past the time, at least in the U.S., to not have a guaranteed basic income system of some type (that includes at least basic health care).
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - krigi 12y ago
      I was once the person you describe, and I'm currently the person the parent comment describes (in a velvet coffin 100k+ job). One problem is that gifted programs (at least in public schools) are contrary to reality. If the gifted programs in your state are like the one I was enrolled in, then members had to have a 130+ IQ to be admitted. There is the rub. Upon exiting school you suddenly and jarringly discover that not everyone else in the world has a 130+ IQ like the people you spent the past 8-10 years with, and things get very slow. Even at places like Google and Facebook not everyone has a 130+ IQ. The world is a boring and unchallenging place when you're forced to go through it at school-zone speeds. Some people, like me, have severe difficulties adjusting to this deceleration. I was in gifted programs from first until tenth grade. However, after college (tech Ivy), I spent almost a decade in low-paying and unchallenging jobs while wracked with depression. Only a few years ago was I able to pull myself out of that hole. The solution is to disband gifted programs. The culture shock experienced by the members once the scaffolding is removed can be pretty severe. It's probably better to make the gifted kids understand that the other 96% of non-gifted people on earth with them are going to be around them all the time. They should learn to deal with it. If there's any gifted education, it should be outside of normal schooling.
      - VLM 12y ago
        "The culture shock" I was also in a G+T program in the 80s and I'd say a major problem in young adult years is no one cares how smart you are, after 16 or so years of being told there's nothing more important than being smart. Much like your GPA, your IQ is pretty much irrelevant once you graduate. Workplace progress suddenly switches entirely over to who you know, who is your dad, who you impress, who you kiss up to, your golf game, etc.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Is it a trap? Or a way to fulfillment? I'm guessing that great intellects are wasted if we cannot inspire them to great contributions. Instead, they avoid 'the trap' and work at a bookstore all their lives.
- asolove 12y ago
  Those who are interested in this will want to read the book "The drama of the gifted child."
  - sgpl 12y ago
    The book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck (the psychology professor at Stanford mentioned) also offers great insight into this. It is also a very well written book, and if you are into audiobooks, the narrator for this one does a splendid job. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/0345472322 http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/...
  - ivan_ah 12y ago
    +1 for "The drama of the gifted child"---my psychiatrist friend recommended it to me, and I learned a lot from it.
- ivan_ah 12y ago
  The need for external validation is a major pathology for the gifted. "Normal" people get varied feedback about their work/performance from the external world, so they learn not to associate and derive their self-worth from external inputs. Gifted kids always hear "you're good / you're the best" so they learn to build their self-image based on this external praise. Essentially, since external feedback is always positive, a strong coupling forms between external inputs and one's feeling of self worth. Later on in life when the world starts to send them not-so-positive feedback about their work, gifted kids take it really badly because the negative feedback hits their core.... whereas a not-so-gifted kids have learned not to take external feedback so seriously long ago. It's definitely something to watch out for. Remember---you are not your work. Your worth is not connected to what you've achieved or what you own---your worth stems from your human nature, and your unlimited ability to adapt, learn, and do stuff in the future.
  - andrewflnr 12y ago
    That last bit is not comforting when you've tried a time or five to adapt and not made it.
    - ivan_ah 12y ago
      Sixth time's the charm!
- jarcane 12y ago
  Speaking as someone who grew up 'gifted': yes. And I still struggle with it. Growing up 'smart' made me stupid. I had tests and things, I was marked for inclusion in the TAG program. I got poor grades not because I wasn't smart enough to do the work, but because the work bored the hell out of me and I refused to do homework and thus allow it to intrude upon fun time away from that tedium (I suspect I also dealt with some undiagnosed ADHD; it runs in the family). The problem though is that when everything comes easy, and you're never given much opportunity and encouragement to challenge yourself, then you also become prone to getting frustrated and confused whenever something isn't coming easily. You're not accustomed to that kind of failure, to not just knowing off the bat or at least being able to pick it up on the fly. So you give up on things a lot. When you get out into the real world, you wind up with a complex. That stuff that made you 'smart' isn't actually that useful outside of certain areas, so on a 'regular job' you're still functionally useless. As a kid in the 90s, at the beginning of the great tech boom, the .com crash still on the horizon, you were inundated with messages that said that because you were smart and knew computers you were somehow just on a free ride to be the next Bill Gates. When the reality is that most of the kids who did go that route wound up broke in '99, and the rest just never got that far in the first place. I genuinely worry that the current startup culture and the push for 'start an app!' programs in schools are headed the same way. Selling tech and 'being smart' as an automatic win at life, which isn't true at all, and 90% of those kids finishing 'accelerated learning' courses in programming will be lucky to grow up writing backend code for a medical insurance billing provider.
  - smilefreak 12y ago
    >Growing up 'smart' made me stupid. I agree and also have faced this problem as I was in the gifted programs all through school, then into university. However, in my third year of University I failed the entire year, owing mostly to the assurance in my ability to just wing it. This had profound effects on my psyche and over the last two years, I have been trying to reprogram and discover strategies to not fall into this trap. In areas of life where many struggle, I am sharp, but in other areas I really struggle and learning to appreciate the talents of others in this area has been an eye-opener. One of the major things for me was writing; I just don't find it easy. Possibly the largest change for me was actually facing up to that fact and starting to read and write again, which I hadn't done since high-school. Now I am enrolled in a MSc program and actively engaged in learning and struggling in the areas I am weak; I believe this change is starting to pay off. The hardest thing was to accept that I wasn't good at everything, and to start working hard like everyone else.
pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
seems like too many kids are right.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jbob2000 12y ago
I really liked this part, and if there's one thing I'm taking away from the article, it's this: > "Actually, praise may not be the optimal way, but we are so praise oriented. We can ask the child questions about the process: “How did you do that? Tell me about it.” As they talk about the process and the strategies they tried, we can appreciate it. We can be interested in it. We can encourage it. It doesn’t have to be outright praise."
- autism_hurts 12y ago
  This should be common knowledge to anyone not on the autism spectrum. You don't say "I really love your design." and end it there. "What inspired your design?" "How did you choose that X?" "Why did you make Y like that?" And suddenly you're conversing and inspiring.
  - dyscrete 12y ago
    Wow this is insulting.
    - dasil003 12y ago
      Judging by the name it's a professional troll account. I smell a hellban coming.
      - tokenadult 12y ago
        I just saw my first example of the [flagkilled] mark on a comment. I guess I mostly hang out in threads with less trolling.
        josephschmoe 12y ago
        Same. I was so confused because I thought these comments were in reaction to the top comment.
        Crito 12y ago
WhitneyLand 12y ago
This seems like a problem made worse by the similar appearance of intelligence and experience. Growing up it can be hard to understand how the skills of others can be acquired given enough time and effort.
navait 12y ago
Should we be encouraging people to stay the science course? There are a glut of science phd's in the workforce. I dropped out of my phd program to just do an MS because I found I simply wasn't smart enough to hack it. My research wasn't going anywhere, and I was barely holding on with my grades. After school, I will stay in engineering. I wish someone had told me I wasn't good enough rather than spending 3 years here. Science is hard, soul-crushing and not that well-paying. Better to quit before they go into grad school than to waste years to be me. Only the truly dedicated and brilliant will survive.
- wtallis 12y ago
  The article is talking about the much broader STEM category. It's not taking sides in any pure vs. applied or academia vs. industry debate. Your decision to get an engineering MS wasn't an exit from the category.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Studying science doesn't mean pursuing a science degree or a job in a scientific field. For myself I've always been enthusiastic about science, I learned on my own, I took pretty much every science class available in my high school and took AP tests in physics, chemistry, and biology. In college I got a degree in math and pursued another degree in chemistry before finding a career as a software developer. I'm a huge critic of the flaws in the educational system, but I wouldn't give up my experience studying science in school for anything. It's molded who I am, it's made me a better person and a better developer, and I wish that more people would share that experience. There are many people who defend studying "the humanities" as something universally valuable and universally desirable, and I think there's truth in that. I think there's just as much truth that studying science is universally valuable and universally desirable, regardless of ones eventual career aspirations.
Torgo 12y ago
The expert in this article is very subtly suggesting that parenting that does not acknowledge a biological difference in behavior between boys and girls is a factor in fewer women in the sciences.
- autism_hurts 12y ago
  Yes, yes -- this is a good comment. shoots your comment into the all-consuming hellfire of the sun
- bardot 12y ago
  fewer women, actually. is that biological, too?
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  The unfortunate reality is that boys and girls are different, radicals would have you believe otherwise, but if you care about your children you should learn about these differences and nurture them to their fullest potential.
simmons 12y ago
If education is anything like it was in my school years, I wonder if children are actively discouraged from pursuing science by educators that find the subject difficult or impractical to teach within their provided constraints. I have a very clear memory of an after-school workshop I attended in early high school to prepare students for the ACT, a college entrance exam that was common in that time and place. This exam tested students on math, English, reading, and science reasoning. When it came time for the teachers to provide advice on science reasoning, they basically told the students to not bother, and just guess as best they can. I was completely floored at this extraordinarily defeatist attitude. Sure, this school had science classes, but they mostly taught science memorization (what does ATP stand for?) and not science reasoning.
- dblarons 12y ago
  To be fair, the science section of the ACT is testing the ability to understand graphs and read short passages on scientific topics. In this sense, it is more of a reading comprehension section than a science section. In my opinion, this is more fair than testing specific science topics that a student might not have been taught in their high school.
  - simmons 12y ago
    My memory on the test itself may be a bit hazy (~24 years ago) and my interpretation at that age may not have been accurate, but I do seem to recall some amount of reasoning was required. E.g., looking at a graph and drawing a conclusion from it. Not any great feat of reasoning, but still one that the school faculty felt was beyond the reach of their students.
nagrom 12y ago
Tangential to the article, I have two hypotheses: 1) There is not a shortage of scientists. There's loads of kids going to graduate school to become servants for mediocre, yet politically-connected scientists. Then, once they have spent the X years and $Y in opportunity costs to get a PhD, they have to figure out a career for themselves. This is a bad, not a good, thing. It reduces early-stage career experimentation and encourages low-quality science. 2) You don't need to be smart to be a scientist; you need to be stubborn. This is similar to the argument that ideas don't matter for entrepreneurship. There are loads of theories and ideas in any given field about the way that things may be. What you need, as a minimum, is the ability to stick the course to figure out a way of testing those theories and ideas and do the (extraordinarily boring) legwork to get it done. I know a lot of scientists (physicists and mathematicians) and all of them are stubborn, but not particularly brilliant. 99% of physics and mathematics are made up of people who will do drudge work for years with very little recognition or reward. Very, very occasionally, one of them hits the jackpot. It's not brilliance that defines a professional scientist; it's a willingness to be bored and work weekends for very little compensation.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  I agree, but you can apply your second hypothesis to pretty much any pursuit or career. "It's not brilliance that defines a professional artist; it's a willingness to draw constantly for very little compensation." "It's not brilliance that defines a professional athlete; it's a willingness to be bored, exercise a lot, grind out drills, and play many games." "It's not brilliance that defines a professional programmer..." Everything in life boils down to perspiration at some point.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Professional programmers actually receive quite a lot of compensation, though.
    - ps4fanboy 12y ago
      Only the top tier do, takes some low pay grinding to get there
jiggy2011 12y ago
More likely they are quitting science because they know it's a lot of work for not very much pay and it's definitely not a sexy profession.
- arbutus 12y ago
  If you replace 'sexy' with 'viable', this could make sense for pure sciences. Given the size of a student loan it can take to pay for a degree (especially if you need more than just a Bachelor's), pure sciences could be losing some kids to engineering over potential salary. Those kids would still fall within the scope of this article though (STEM in general).
- simmons 12y ago
  I see this sentiment elsewhere in the thread, but my thinking upon reading the article was that these children are not just abandoning science research jobs by quitting science, but also relatively well-paying jobs in fields for which science is prerequisite -- medicine, engineering, etc.
- amelius 12y ago
  Indeed. And I suspect that a change in culture (or at least perception) could possibly be the best way to give science a boost.
- yen223 12y ago
  Seeing what PhDs get paid, I think the intersection of people smart enough to qualify for a PhD, and the people idealistic enough to forgo better pay in other industries is shrinking.
mi3law 12y ago
Science these days is mostly done in institutions of higher learning, where 1) it is a pretty rigid process with slightly counter productive incentives (publish papers! Any papers!), and 2) it is available only to a select few who've made it through a rigid and ivory-tower-esque formula (i.e. the universities themselves). I think that's a big problem, and one that makes the self esteem issue worse (if you don't fit the formula, you'll feel inferior). I always wanted to be a scientist, but then gravitated towards entrepreneurship because it's less rigid and defined.
forkandwait 12y ago
Public education is about imposing class structure, not encouraging excellence. If we decided to execute for real, we could be swimming in young engineers.
sjs382 12y ago
I'm currently work as a full-time developer, and I love it. I never thought I'd be a developer, though. I was beginning to learn programming around 8th-9th grade, but I was only creating webpages, simple CRUD apps, and other things that weren't very "serious".[1] At this time, I knew I didn't want to be a programmer because I knew the job equated to sitting around doing math problems all day. It's not that I didn't think I was smart enough—I was a very good math student. I just couldn't think of anything less appealing than doing math problems all day, every day for the rest of my life. I didn't know what the job actually entailed, but I thought I did. [1] I thought of "programmers" as people who built 3D engines, used complex math to render interfaces (shapes, colors, animations, etc). By that standard, I'm still not a programmer. :)
tn13 12y ago
This is how I interpret "not smart". - If I have to be scientist, I have to demonstrate certain level of competence in science and maths. - I can achieve that in 2 ways. 1. I am so brilliant that I reach that level without breaking a sweat. 2. I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level. - Kids are not interested in putting those efforts, neither do their parents put in necessary efforts to convince them. - Kids are getting lazy, running away from personal responsibility and ambitions. This is bad because eventually they will end up living on welfare money taxed from the hardworking students.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  So, actually smarter than the kids putting in all the work!
- seanflyon 12y ago
  > I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level. I think that is a valid point for some students, but for others I think it is more: "I don't want to put in all that effort only to fail because I'm not smart enough"
westoncb 12y ago
I've read a couple of Dweck's books and highly recommend them—probably "Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development" for the crowd here. Her other book is branded like a self-help book, and it's still good though I imagine many won't like the style. Her theory hinges on the concept of a 'declarative knowledge system' as a component of cognition, which could be described (in an over-simple manner) as "beliefs are significant determinants of behavior." This structure is also at the heart of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the dominant paradigm for treating anxiety, depression, ocd, and others. It also works by correcting problematic beliefs in patients. The belief in question in Dweck's work, which has so much impact on people's learning efficacy, is whether intelligence is changeable or not. If someone thinks it's changeable, they work hard to change it, and value effort. If they think it's something fixed that they're born with, they hold out hope that they might be brilliant for as long as possible, trying to make sure they and others think that's the case. You can imagine how this impacts people responses to failures in intellectual domains: if you think intelligence is changeable, you are glad to be given information on a weakness that you can now improve; if you think it's fixed, you become scared and discouraged. I think this article focuses on the praise aspect, because it's easy to communicate the idea to lots of people; but the reason the type of praise matters is because one type or the other leads (on average) to the formation of one belief or another on the question of intelligence mutability. If you're not a parent, but someone interested in being able to learn more effectively, the praise aspect is probably less relevant to you—but the books are good. The thing to keep in mind though, is that the only way to reap the benefits of what she's talking about is to understand that intelligence is changeable (to deeply believe it—that's where it's going to impact your behavior). Reading her books can help instill the idea—I'm still looking for other ways to prove it to myself and have had some success.
qwerta 12y ago
Perhaps the solution is to make science 'easier'. Works just fine with arts.
xorcist 12y ago
I don't understand the American fixation with being "smart". I have worked 15 years and coded low-level, applications and ops. I've always kept an interest in this and keep a few side projects. But I am not smart. Anyone could do this, given the right training. If what you want in life is a science PhD, go get it. Anyone can do it. You may have to work more for it, but that's it.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > You may have to work more for it, but that's it. Fortunately getting a doctorate doesn't have a hard deadline, or at least that's my impression (of course it may vary).
jmtame 12y ago
To my fellow hackers/programmers out there: I worked as a mentor on a startup for a while that taught people how to program. One thing that's really frustrating to a beginner to hear is "it's really not that hard." Actually I would argue this is the single biggest deterrent to people learning, and it's completely avoidable. Hackers like to say this to encourage people to learn how to code, I've seen it happen in casual conversations, but it has the unintended consequence of making the beginner think if it's hard, then they must be stupid because this other person told them it's not hard. It's actually really hard to learn to program, we just easily forget about that. And we also forget that we had other people help us along the way, we didn't learn it inside of a vacuum. If you're a hacker, you owe it to a beginner to let them know it's difficult but if they persist they can overcome the learning curve (for some people it's steeper or wider, but it's still not easy no matter how you look at it). We're very honest about how difficult starting a startup is, so we should be equally honest when it comes to learning to code. Hope this helps anyone out there interested in learning.
iharhajster 12y ago
there is no boring subject, just boring teacher. someone smarter than me said: teaching is not filling a cup. teaching is lighting a fire. i still remember how some teachers sucked at knowledge, and/or knowledge transmission to students. math is actually pretty easy if it is explained to you in a words you understand. i think feynman said it. some of best teaching i've seen is walter lewins mit 801 and 802. it's available on mit ocw. it's not just about teaching but also lighting a fire of students' willingness to start to learn for themselves . and always teach via example (sokrat, i think).
templeos2 12y ago
I was the best math person at my school. My school chose me for academic decathelon. I competed in against schools in Phoenix and I got a 3rd place medal in science in the academic decaythelon. I am the third best science student for my grade level in all of phoenix.
ivan_ah 12y ago
As a math writer (math entrepreneur?) I talk to a lot of people about math and I'm often shocked by the reactions I encounter. Introducing math into a conversation has a consistent effect of making 30-40% of people very uncomfortable, and they usually try to quickly change the subject. I was perplexed by this, until I realized what is going on. Many people are convinced of the implication: person is smart --> person is good at math So if you're not good at math (e.g. bad grades in high school), the rules of logic (specifically modus tollens) implies that you're not smart! Since nobody wants to feel unsmart, or recall painful math experiences from their schooling, they avoid the subject as much as possible. In the light of this, the first few chapters of my book[1] serve to help readers get over their math fears. Honestly, I feel I need to learn about psychology to help people with their math phobia... Once you get rid of fear, math can become an amazing source of knowledge buzz. [1] http://minireference.com/ http://minireference.com/
freyr 12y ago
Science is hard work, and not always high reward. If a kid has a natural aptitude for numerical thinking, logical thinking, etc., but no strong affinity for science, they may just be smart enough not to enter that field. Very often, being really "smart" in a subject is dependent on having a sustained high level of interest in that subject. Not at the grade school or high school level, but at the graduate or professional level. It's possible to fake it, relying on raw intelligence and forcing yourself to perform well in a mentally-demanding field that you're not genuinely interested in, but it's way, way more work.
estatemanjoe 12y ago
Kind of niche comment BUT this starts in kindergarten. I'm a fan of staving off kindergarten until a kid is 6. If they feel smarter than the other kids at that young age, it'll become how they view themselves. They'll step up to their own self-perception.
threatofrain 12y ago
I think there may be a realistic perception of the difficulty of academic competition, as well as the number of open positions and the compensation. And there are definitely a lot of smart and hard working people there. It's one thing to ask, "How smart do you have to be to do useful science?", and it's quite another to ask, "Do you think you can make it in the field of competition?"
jamesash 12y ago
Chemist here. If there's one thing that being in a research lab does to you, it's that you feel dumb almost all of the time - and it's generally not because of your coworkers, it's because the vast majority of experiments fail. There are rare feelings of success, and many moments of feeling that you are in a dark hole trying to climb out. To make significant headway you need a thick skin, and even then it can be extremely hard dealing with failure after failure. My unpopular opinion is that, given that there is currently not a shortage of scientists in the USA, it is not a travesty that many people who feel "dumb" in the early stages of learning science opt out of a scientific career that will only exacerbate these feelings, and thus save themselves considerable opportunity costs by seeking a profession that is easier on the ego.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  I would agree, but only to the extent that our society doesn't value science enough to effectively use all the scientists we produce already. Rather, it values more business and pushing money around, of maybe building things. If there was some kind of crisis (say cold war) and we needed new inventions to survive, things might be really different. But right now, we are just comfortable with the world as it is with not much demand for radical transformation.
dqdo 12y ago
Too many adults quit science because it does not pay enough.
digital-rubber 12y ago
"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." - Socrates Maybe they are all little socrates'es
known 12y ago
Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.-- Leo Tolstoy
geebee 12y ago
Can I be really cynical here? I might rephrase this "Too many kids quit science because they're wise as well as smart". I've been on this hobby horse for a while here on HN, and I'm worried people are getting tired of me. But seriously, think about it. I don't have attrition rate numbers for typical undergraduate STEM degrees, but I do know that undergrads don't drop out of Economics or Poly Sci or Literature to major in CS, Engineering, Physics, and so forth. Where I do have data, look at attrition rates for graduate schools, especially at the elite level. A typical attrition rate for an elite Law or Medical school is below 1%. A typical attrition rate for an elite Engineering or Science PhD program is 35-50%! MS programs aren't s studied, but nation wide, attrition rates are about 33% (I'd have to dig though my HN comments to find the cite for that one, and it was behind a paywall). So, considering how difficult all this is, outcomes must be much better for those STEM grads, right? Well, no, not really. CS is a good major at the undergrad level, and grads do pretty well. But again, at the elite level, top software developers, even from elite CS schools with grad degrees, just don't pull it in like dermatologists or radiologists. I read a pretty heartbreaking story about a woman who was denied the right to use sick leave for maternity leave from her grad program. My cousin, a radiologist, worked part time (20 hour weeks) for a while when she had a kid, and she still pulled down more than my salary as a developer. I know another woman who is an emergency medicine physician who did the same thing. They are so, so, so much better off not going into science. A RAND study found that the American aversion to STEM graduate degrees in favor of professional degrees is economically rational and shouldn't be a head scratcher. The head scratcher is why people still act like the only thing we need to do to get more people into science is "make it cool", or "improve middle school math", and so forth. We have got to stop acting like there's something surprising here. Science gets kids who are very smart and utterly devoted but perhaps lacking in wisdom, and who just can't believe that they might be in the bottom half of a cohort with high grades in STEM coursework and test scores above 95%ile. Or, alternatively, they are students who don't have these other options (US med and law schools are not nearly as accessible to international students as engineering and science PhD programs are). So if the "professions" are cut off to you because you aren't a US citizen, your decision to go into a graduate STEM program (especially if it fast tracks you to US residency) may be rational in a way that wouldn't hold for someone who already possesses US citizenship (who typically shun science PhD programs).
sqd 12y ago
The entering of people who are unable to do meaningful research into the science field is a blatant waste of social resources.
netcan 12y ago
The crux seems to be this: "They often praise the ability, the talent, or the intelligence too much. The opposite of this is the good process praise" I've been hearing variations for this for years, often in the context of comparing educational traditions of Asia to Europe-US. It seems each has their advantage. I haven't heard any smashingly convincing evidence that there is some insight which can be applied across the board. It mostly sounds like people picking a preference and arguing for it. I don't see whay science is special here. If I was to pick my own bias and go with it, it's that education at some point (I don't know if it's at 5 or 25) needs to get students to really internalize the actual process of learning and practice. Spend a quality hour a day on piano and you will get good at piano. Same goes for maths, painting, fiction writing, foreign languages and lucha libre. They needs to realize that they can get good at stuff. They need to realize how much work it is and they need to internalize that they (specifically) can do it. I have another pet peeve here. These discussions start with a problem and the immediate assumption is that the educational establishment needs to fix it. Well, the educational establishment is a huge lumbering giant and it's not necessarily the right man for the job. What about the ballet instructor, mother or godfather. We're talking more about child psychology than science education here. Raising kids better is certainly an admirable goal, but is this best addressed at a humanity-as-a-whole level? Do you have a daughter, nephew or godson? Can you make a difference as an adult in their life? Why not start there. At least it's something most of us can do something about.
- nevergetenglish 12y ago
  "They needs to realize that they can get good at stuff". Each time I begin to learn something new, as a new programming language, the beginnings are very hard and you feel dumb, this is the most difficult part. Once you have practice a lot, then all goes smoothly. Add to this that everyone seems to forget quickly how hard was to give the first steps. When you are learning something new people take for granted that you should be ready, but may times you are in that stage in which progress is hard and slow. So we should emphasize this point when we start learning.
nshepperd 12y ago
I don't think the main problem is what sort of praise these kids are being given. I remember being told, at a seminar on exactly this sort of thing, that more than half of students entering high school here (Australia) still did not understand fractions. The high school curriculum then steamrollers on to try and teach these kids about algebra, calculus, trigonometry. Not once do we stop to check that the students grasp the prerequisites necessary to understand the material, rather than just faking enough to get 50% on a test. Is it surprising that people develop learned helplessness about mathematics?
hedgew 12y ago
Forcing people who genuinely are not smart enough into sciences is sure to cause a lot of suffering and wasted time, though. Many of us here have social circles that consists only of the highly educated; in these bubbles it's easy to forget that many people simply are not capable of higher level mathematics, and are not capable of becoming even mediocre scientists. It's likely that the average child - and the vast majority of all children - would be happier and more productive in other professions. It's harsh, but try to judge your child's talents objectively, then encourage them to do what best for them.
sporkenfang 12y ago
Dweck's last comment really got struck me. By virtue of being taught to place authority and trust in the parent, the child generally wants to do what the parent says is "right". Some children, by virtue of their nature or peer pressure in their surroundings or whatever in addition to parental disapproval, begin to feel that negativity toward their interests reinforced. Had my exceedingly conservative grandparents and parents actually been able to "okay" my early interest in engineering and the sciences at the very least instead of telling me it was unfeminine (as well as my brother's early interests in fashion and mathematics, which were strongly labelled both at home and among our peers as faggy and uncool) I think both of us would have had less anguish and self-doubt and emotional issues as teens and in our early twenties. If children are stubborn enough, they can overcome this kind of negative reinforcement at home of the societal norms they see expressed at school and throughout much of whatever culture they belong to. However, as is the case with other people I grew up with who had similar backgrounds, without stubbornness and the willingness to recognize where one would be most happy and useful it is possible to drift for a long time without understanding why everything about one's identity is orthogonal to how it feels it should be, or even to just end up in a mediocre paper shuffling job forever. Imo it isn't about encouragement or positive reinforcement, but rather (as a parent) helping your children to figure out what they want to do and what they are interested in without projecting your own hopes and aspirations on them. Regardless of if your kid wants to live in a garage in Monterey and make sculptures of feet (or, hell, move to India and build water treatment plants, or study blue whales, or whatever), even if you think they'd make an amazing neurosurgeon/NFL player/xyz, don't push them to be something they're not. They get enough backlash from their peers and the rest of the world as it is. Too many kids don't just quit STEM (or never start) because they're pushed out of it or excluded for one reason or another, too many kids go into what seems socially acceptable because they aren't allowed space to grow into whatever the hell they are.

205 points by tokenadult 12y ago

> When students thought of their intelligence as a thing that’s just fixed, they were vulnerable. They were not willing to take on challenges that might test their intelligence, and they weren’t resilient when they came into obstacles. And this is also why so many gifted children become mediocre adults.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
The demographic of Mensa members is highly-intelligent non-contributors. Early life (childhood) of praise and 'successes' turned into something harder; they perceive it as failure and back away. That's my take anyway.
Retric 12y ago
I suspect a huge factor is people being smart enough to avoid the fame/money trap. If you can trivially get a 40-45 hour a week 100+k job that's reasonably pleasant shooting for the stars is far less appealing.
- a_c_s 12y ago
  I know plenty of brilliant people who are now unemployed or severely underemployed (working minimum wage retail jobs despite having a college degree). Despite being academically gifted, they haven't found their way to careers that match their abilities. I haven't been able to put my finger on what exactly it is that causes these people to "get lost" on their way, but it is common enough that I think we need to be doing something differently with regards to gifted & talented education in the USA.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Maybe a basic guaranteed income, so a physics PhD doesn't have to drive a bus to eat. Then they could, I don't know, work on physics!
    - akmiller 12y ago
      Absolutely! We are way past the time, at least in the U.S., to not have a guaranteed basic income system of some type (that includes at least basic health care).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - krigi 12y ago
    I was once the person you describe, and I'm currently the person the parent comment describes (in a velvet coffin 100k+ job). One problem is that gifted programs (at least in public schools) are contrary to reality. If the gifted programs in your state are like the one I was enrolled in, then members had to have a 130+ IQ to be admitted. There is the rub. Upon exiting school you suddenly and jarringly discover that not everyone else in the world has a 130+ IQ like the people you spent the past 8-10 years with, and things get very slow. Even at places like Google and Facebook not everyone has a 130+ IQ. The world is a boring and unchallenging place when you're forced to go through it at school-zone speeds. Some people, like me, have severe difficulties adjusting to this deceleration. I was in gifted programs from first until tenth grade. However, after college (tech Ivy), I spent almost a decade in low-paying and unchallenging jobs while wracked with depression. Only a few years ago was I able to pull myself out of that hole. The solution is to disband gifted programs. The culture shock experienced by the members once the scaffolding is removed can be pretty severe. It's probably better to make the gifted kids understand that the other 96% of non-gifted people on earth with them are going to be around them all the time. They should learn to deal with it. If there's any gifted education, it should be outside of normal schooling.
    - VLM 12y ago
      "The culture shock" I was also in a G+T program in the 80s and I'd say a major problem in young adult years is no one cares how smart you are, after 16 or so years of being told there's nothing more important than being smart. Much like your GPA, your IQ is pretty much irrelevant once you graduate. Workplace progress suddenly switches entirely over to who you know, who is your dad, who you impress, who you kiss up to, your golf game, etc.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Is it a trap? Or a way to fulfillment? I'm guessing that great intellects are wasted if we cannot inspire them to great contributions. Instead, they avoid 'the trap' and work at a bookstore all their lives.
asolove 12y ago
Those who are interested in this will want to read the book "The drama of the gifted child."
- sgpl 12y ago
  The book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck (the psychology professor at Stanford mentioned) also offers great insight into this. It is also a very well written book, and if you are into audiobooks, the narrator for this one does a splendid job. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/0345472322 http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/...
- ivan_ah 12y ago
  +1 for "The drama of the gifted child"---my psychiatrist friend recommended it to me, and I learned a lot from it.
ivan_ah 12y ago
The need for external validation is a major pathology for the gifted. "Normal" people get varied feedback about their work/performance from the external world, so they learn not to associate and derive their self-worth from external inputs. Gifted kids always hear "you're good / you're the best" so they learn to build their self-image based on this external praise. Essentially, since external feedback is always positive, a strong coupling forms between external inputs and one's feeling of self worth. Later on in life when the world starts to send them not-so-positive feedback about their work, gifted kids take it really badly because the negative feedback hits their core.... whereas a not-so-gifted kids have learned not to take external feedback so seriously long ago. It's definitely something to watch out for. Remember---you are not your work. Your worth is not connected to what you've achieved or what you own---your worth stems from your human nature, and your unlimited ability to adapt, learn, and do stuff in the future.
- andrewflnr 12y ago
  That last bit is not comforting when you've tried a time or five to adapt and not made it.
  - ivan_ah 12y ago
    Sixth time's the charm!
jarcane 12y ago
Speaking as someone who grew up 'gifted': yes. And I still struggle with it. Growing up 'smart' made me stupid. I had tests and things, I was marked for inclusion in the TAG program. I got poor grades not because I wasn't smart enough to do the work, but because the work bored the hell out of me and I refused to do homework and thus allow it to intrude upon fun time away from that tedium (I suspect I also dealt with some undiagnosed ADHD; it runs in the family). The problem though is that when everything comes easy, and you're never given much opportunity and encouragement to challenge yourself, then you also become prone to getting frustrated and confused whenever something isn't coming easily. You're not accustomed to that kind of failure, to not just knowing off the bat or at least being able to pick it up on the fly. So you give up on things a lot. When you get out into the real world, you wind up with a complex. That stuff that made you 'smart' isn't actually that useful outside of certain areas, so on a 'regular job' you're still functionally useless. As a kid in the 90s, at the beginning of the great tech boom, the .com crash still on the horizon, you were inundated with messages that said that because you were smart and knew computers you were somehow just on a free ride to be the next Bill Gates. When the reality is that most of the kids who did go that route wound up broke in '99, and the rest just never got that far in the first place. I genuinely worry that the current startup culture and the push for 'start an app!' programs in schools are headed the same way. Selling tech and 'being smart' as an automatic win at life, which isn't true at all, and 90% of those kids finishing 'accelerated learning' courses in programming will be lucky to grow up writing backend code for a medical insurance billing provider.
- smilefreak 12y ago
  >Growing up 'smart' made me stupid. I agree and also have faced this problem as I was in the gifted programs all through school, then into university. However, in my third year of University I failed the entire year, owing mostly to the assurance in my ability to just wing it. This had profound effects on my psyche and over the last two years, I have been trying to reprogram and discover strategies to not fall into this trap. In areas of life where many struggle, I am sharp, but in other areas I really struggle and learning to appreciate the talents of others in this area has been an eye-opener. One of the major things for me was writing; I just don't find it easy. Possibly the largest change for me was actually facing up to that fact and starting to read and write again, which I hadn't done since high-school. Now I am enrolled in a MSc program and actively engaged in learning and struggling in the areas I am weak; I believe this change is starting to pay off. The hardest thing was to accept that I wasn't good at everything, and to start working hard like everyone else.

pg_is_a_butt 12y ago

seems like too many kids are right.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jbob2000 12y ago

I really liked this part, and if there's one thing I'm taking away from the article, it's this: > "Actually, praise may not be the optimal way, but we are so praise oriented. We can ask the child questions about the process: “How did you do that? Tell me about it.” As they talk about the process and the strategies they tried, we can appreciate it. We can be interested in it. We can encourage it. It doesn’t have to be outright praise."

autism_hurts 12y ago
This should be common knowledge to anyone not on the autism spectrum. You don't say "I really love your design." and end it there. "What inspired your design?" "How did you choose that X?" "Why did you make Y like that?" And suddenly you're conversing and inspiring.
- dyscrete 12y ago
  Wow this is insulting.
  - dasil003 12y ago
    Judging by the name it's a professional troll account. I smell a hellban coming.
    - tokenadult 12y ago
      I just saw my first example of the [flagkilled] mark on a comment. I guess I mostly hang out in threads with less trolling.
      - josephschmoe 12y ago
        Same. I was so confused because I thought these comments were in reaction to the top comment.
      - Crito 12y ago

WhitneyLand 12y ago

This seems like a problem made worse by the similar appearance of intelligence and experience. Growing up it can be hard to understand how the skills of others can be acquired given enough time and effort.

navait 12y ago

Should we be encouraging people to stay the science course? There are a glut of science phd's in the workforce. I dropped out of my phd program to just do an MS because I found I simply wasn't smart enough to hack it. My research wasn't going anywhere, and I was barely holding on with my grades. After school, I will stay in engineering. I wish someone had told me I wasn't good enough rather than spending 3 years here. Science is hard, soul-crushing and not that well-paying. Better to quit before they go into grad school than to waste years to be me. Only the truly dedicated and brilliant will survive.

wtallis 12y ago
The article is talking about the much broader STEM category. It's not taking sides in any pure vs. applied or academia vs. industry debate. Your decision to get an engineering MS wasn't an exit from the category.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
Studying science doesn't mean pursuing a science degree or a job in a scientific field. For myself I've always been enthusiastic about science, I learned on my own, I took pretty much every science class available in my high school and took AP tests in physics, chemistry, and biology. In college I got a degree in math and pursued another degree in chemistry before finding a career as a software developer. I'm a huge critic of the flaws in the educational system, but I wouldn't give up my experience studying science in school for anything. It's molded who I am, it's made me a better person and a better developer, and I wish that more people would share that experience. There are many people who defend studying "the humanities" as something universally valuable and universally desirable, and I think there's truth in that. I think there's just as much truth that studying science is universally valuable and universally desirable, regardless of ones eventual career aspirations.

Torgo 12y ago

The expert in this article is very subtly suggesting that parenting that does not acknowledge a biological difference in behavior between boys and girls is a factor in fewer women in the sciences.

autism_hurts 12y ago
Yes, yes -- this is a good comment. shoots your comment into the all-consuming hellfire of the sun
bardot 12y ago
fewer women, actually. is that biological, too?
ps4fanboy 12y ago
The unfortunate reality is that boys and girls are different, radicals would have you believe otherwise, but if you care about your children you should learn about these differences and nurture them to their fullest potential.

simmons 12y ago

If education is anything like it was in my school years, I wonder if children are actively discouraged from pursuing science by educators that find the subject difficult or impractical to teach within their provided constraints. I have a very clear memory of an after-school workshop I attended in early high school to prepare students for the ACT, a college entrance exam that was common in that time and place. This exam tested students on math, English, reading, and science reasoning. When it came time for the teachers to provide advice on science reasoning, they basically told the students to not bother, and just guess as best they can. I was completely floored at this extraordinarily defeatist attitude. Sure, this school had science classes, but they mostly taught science memorization (what does ATP stand for?) and not science reasoning.

dblarons 12y ago
To be fair, the science section of the ACT is testing the ability to understand graphs and read short passages on scientific topics. In this sense, it is more of a reading comprehension section than a science section. In my opinion, this is more fair than testing specific science topics that a student might not have been taught in their high school.
- simmons 12y ago
  My memory on the test itself may be a bit hazy (~24 years ago) and my interpretation at that age may not have been accurate, but I do seem to recall some amount of reasoning was required. E.g., looking at a graph and drawing a conclusion from it. Not any great feat of reasoning, but still one that the school faculty felt was beyond the reach of their students.

nagrom 12y ago

Tangential to the article, I have two hypotheses: 1) There is not a shortage of scientists. There's loads of kids going to graduate school to become servants for mediocre, yet politically-connected scientists. Then, once they have spent the X years and $Y in opportunity costs to get a PhD, they have to figure out a career for themselves. This is a bad, not a good, thing. It reduces early-stage career experimentation and encourages low-quality science. 2) You don't need to be smart to be a scientist; you need to be stubborn. This is similar to the argument that ideas don't matter for entrepreneurship. There are loads of theories and ideas in any given field about the way that things may be. What you need, as a minimum, is the ability to stick the course to figure out a way of testing those theories and ideas and do the (extraordinarily boring) legwork to get it done. I know a lot of scientists (physicists and mathematicians) and all of them are stubborn, but not particularly brilliant. 99% of physics and mathematics are made up of people who will do drudge work for years with very little recognition or reward. Very, very occasionally, one of them hits the jackpot. It's not brilliance that defines a professional scientist; it's a willingness to be bored and work weekends for very little compensation.

ANTSANTS 12y ago
I agree, but you can apply your second hypothesis to pretty much any pursuit or career. "It's not brilliance that defines a professional artist; it's a willingness to draw constantly for very little compensation." "It's not brilliance that defines a professional athlete; it's a willingness to be bored, exercise a lot, grind out drills, and play many games." "It's not brilliance that defines a professional programmer..." Everything in life boils down to perspiration at some point.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Professional programmers actually receive quite a lot of compensation, though.
  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    Only the top tier do, takes some low pay grinding to get there

jiggy2011 12y ago

More likely they are quitting science because they know it's a lot of work for not very much pay and it's definitely not a sexy profession.

arbutus 12y ago
If you replace 'sexy' with 'viable', this could make sense for pure sciences. Given the size of a student loan it can take to pay for a degree (especially if you need more than just a Bachelor's), pure sciences could be losing some kids to engineering over potential salary. Those kids would still fall within the scope of this article though (STEM in general).
simmons 12y ago
I see this sentiment elsewhere in the thread, but my thinking upon reading the article was that these children are not just abandoning science research jobs by quitting science, but also relatively well-paying jobs in fields for which science is prerequisite -- medicine, engineering, etc.
amelius 12y ago
Indeed. And I suspect that a change in culture (or at least perception) could possibly be the best way to give science a boost.
yen223 12y ago
Seeing what PhDs get paid, I think the intersection of people smart enough to qualify for a PhD, and the people idealistic enough to forgo better pay in other industries is shrinking.

mi3law 12y ago

Science these days is mostly done in institutions of higher learning, where 1) it is a pretty rigid process with slightly counter productive incentives (publish papers! Any papers!), and 2) it is available only to a select few who've made it through a rigid and ivory-tower-esque formula (i.e. the universities themselves). I think that's a big problem, and one that makes the self esteem issue worse (if you don't fit the formula, you'll feel inferior). I always wanted to be a scientist, but then gravitated towards entrepreneurship because it's less rigid and defined.

forkandwait 12y ago

Public education is about imposing class structure, not encouraging excellence. If we decided to execute for real, we could be swimming in young engineers.

sjs382 12y ago

I'm currently work as a full-time developer, and I love it. I never thought I'd be a developer, though. I was beginning to learn programming around 8th-9th grade, but I was only creating webpages, simple CRUD apps, and other things that weren't very "serious".[1] At this time, I knew I didn't want to be a programmer because I knew the job equated to sitting around doing math problems all day. It's not that I didn't think I was smart enough—I was a very good math student. I just couldn't think of anything less appealing than doing math problems all day, every day for the rest of my life. I didn't know what the job actually entailed, but I thought I did. [1] I thought of "programmers" as people who built 3D engines, used complex math to render interfaces (shapes, colors, animations, etc). By that standard, I'm still not a programmer. :)

tn13 12y ago

This is how I interpret "not smart". - If I have to be scientist, I have to demonstrate certain level of competence in science and maths. - I can achieve that in 2 ways. 1. I am so brilliant that I reach that level without breaking a sweat. 2. I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level. - Kids are not interested in putting those efforts, neither do their parents put in necessary efforts to convince them. - Kids are getting lazy, running away from personal responsibility and ambitions. This is bad because eventually they will end up living on welfare money taxed from the hardworking students.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
So, actually smarter than the kids putting in all the work!
seanflyon 12y ago
> I will have to put in more efforts to reach that level. I think that is a valid point for some students, but for others I think it is more: "I don't want to put in all that effort only to fail because I'm not smart enough"

westoncb 12y ago

I've read a couple of Dweck's books and highly recommend them—probably "Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development" for the crowd here. Her other book is branded like a self-help book, and it's still good though I imagine many won't like the style. Her theory hinges on the concept of a 'declarative knowledge system' as a component of cognition, which could be described (in an over-simple manner) as "beliefs are significant determinants of behavior." This structure is also at the heart of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the dominant paradigm for treating anxiety, depression, ocd, and others. It also works by correcting problematic beliefs in patients. The belief in question in Dweck's work, which has so much impact on people's learning efficacy, is whether intelligence is changeable or not. If someone thinks it's changeable, they work hard to change it, and value effort. If they think it's something fixed that they're born with, they hold out hope that they might be brilliant for as long as possible, trying to make sure they and others think that's the case. You can imagine how this impacts people responses to failures in intellectual domains: if you think intelligence is changeable, you are glad to be given information on a weakness that you can now improve; if you think it's fixed, you become scared and discouraged. I think this article focuses on the praise aspect, because it's easy to communicate the idea to lots of people; but the reason the type of praise matters is because one type or the other leads (on average) to the formation of one belief or another on the question of intelligence mutability. If you're not a parent, but someone interested in being able to learn more effectively, the praise aspect is probably less relevant to you—but the books are good. The thing to keep in mind though, is that the only way to reap the benefits of what she's talking about is to understand that intelligence is changeable (to deeply believe it—that's where it's going to impact your behavior). Reading her books can help instill the idea—I'm still looking for other ways to prove it to myself and have had some success.

qwerta 12y ago

Perhaps the solution is to make science 'easier'. Works just fine with arts.

xorcist 12y ago

I don't understand the American fixation with being "smart". I have worked 15 years and coded low-level, applications and ops. I've always kept an interest in this and keep a few side projects. But I am not smart. Anyone could do this, given the right training. If what you want in life is a science PhD, go get it. Anyone can do it. You may have to work more for it, but that's it.

Dewie 12y ago
> You may have to work more for it, but that's it. Fortunately getting a doctorate doesn't have a hard deadline, or at least that's my impression (of course it may vary).

jmtame 12y ago

To my fellow hackers/programmers out there: I worked as a mentor on a startup for a while that taught people how to program. One thing that's really frustrating to a beginner to hear is "it's really not that hard." Actually I would argue this is the single biggest deterrent to people learning, and it's completely avoidable. Hackers like to say this to encourage people to learn how to code, I've seen it happen in casual conversations, but it has the unintended consequence of making the beginner think if it's hard, then they must be stupid because this other person told them it's not hard. It's actually really hard to learn to program, we just easily forget about that. And we also forget that we had other people help us along the way, we didn't learn it inside of a vacuum. If you're a hacker, you owe it to a beginner to let them know it's difficult but if they persist they can overcome the learning curve (for some people it's steeper or wider, but it's still not easy no matter how you look at it). We're very honest about how difficult starting a startup is, so we should be equally honest when it comes to learning to code. Hope this helps anyone out there interested in learning.

iharhajster 12y ago

there is no boring subject, just boring teacher. someone smarter than me said: teaching is not filling a cup. teaching is lighting a fire. i still remember how some teachers sucked at knowledge, and/or knowledge transmission to students. math is actually pretty easy if it is explained to you in a words you understand. i think feynman said it. some of best teaching i've seen is walter lewins mit 801 and 802. it's available on mit ocw. it's not just about teaching but also lighting a fire of students' willingness to start to learn for themselves . and always teach via example (sokrat, i think).

templeos2 12y ago

I was the best math person at my school. My school chose me for academic decathelon. I competed in against schools in Phoenix and I got a 3rd place medal in science in the academic decaythelon. I am the third best science student for my grade level in all of phoenix.

ivan_ah 12y ago

As a math writer (math entrepreneur?) I talk to a lot of people about math and I'm often shocked by the reactions I encounter. Introducing math into a conversation has a consistent effect of making 30-40% of people very uncomfortable, and they usually try to quickly change the subject. I was perplexed by this, until I realized what is going on. Many people are convinced of the implication: person is smart --> person is good at math So if you're not good at math (e.g. bad grades in high school), the rules of logic (specifically modus tollens) implies that you're not smart! Since nobody wants to feel unsmart, or recall painful math experiences from their schooling, they avoid the subject as much as possible. In the light of this, the first few chapters of my book[1] serve to help readers get over their math fears. Honestly, I feel I need to learn about psychology to help people with their math phobia... Once you get rid of fear, math can become an amazing source of knowledge buzz. [1] http://minireference.com/ http://minireference.com/

freyr 12y ago

Science is hard work, and not always high reward. If a kid has a natural aptitude for numerical thinking, logical thinking, etc., but no strong affinity for science, they may just be smart enough not to enter that field. Very often, being really "smart" in a subject is dependent on having a sustained high level of interest in that subject. Not at the grade school or high school level, but at the graduate or professional level. It's possible to fake it, relying on raw intelligence and forcing yourself to perform well in a mentally-demanding field that you're not genuinely interested in, but it's way, way more work.

estatemanjoe 12y ago

Kind of niche comment BUT this starts in kindergarten. I'm a fan of staving off kindergarten until a kid is 6. If they feel smarter than the other kids at that young age, it'll become how they view themselves. They'll step up to their own self-perception.

threatofrain 12y ago

I think there may be a realistic perception of the difficulty of academic competition, as well as the number of open positions and the compensation. And there are definitely a lot of smart and hard working people there. It's one thing to ask, "How smart do you have to be to do useful science?", and it's quite another to ask, "Do you think you can make it in the field of competition?"

jamesash 12y ago

Chemist here. If there's one thing that being in a research lab does to you, it's that you feel dumb almost all of the time - and it's generally not because of your coworkers, it's because the vast majority of experiments fail. There are rare feelings of success, and many moments of feeling that you are in a dark hole trying to climb out. To make significant headway you need a thick skin, and even then it can be extremely hard dealing with failure after failure. My unpopular opinion is that, given that there is currently not a shortage of scientists in the USA, it is not a travesty that many people who feel "dumb" in the early stages of learning science opt out of a scientific career that will only exacerbate these feelings, and thus save themselves considerable opportunity costs by seeking a profession that is easier on the ego.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
I would agree, but only to the extent that our society doesn't value science enough to effectively use all the scientists we produce already. Rather, it values more business and pushing money around, of maybe building things. If there was some kind of crisis (say cold war) and we needed new inventions to survive, things might be really different. But right now, we are just comfortable with the world as it is with not much demand for radical transformation.

dqdo 12y ago

Too many adults quit science because it does not pay enough.

digital-rubber 12y ago

"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." - Socrates Maybe they are all little socrates'es

known 12y ago

Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.-- Leo Tolstoy

geebee 12y ago

Can I be really cynical here? I might rephrase this "Too many kids quit science because they're wise as well as smart". I've been on this hobby horse for a while here on HN, and I'm worried people are getting tired of me. But seriously, think about it. I don't have attrition rate numbers for typical undergraduate STEM degrees, but I do know that undergrads don't drop out of Economics or Poly Sci or Literature to major in CS, Engineering, Physics, and so forth. Where I do have data, look at attrition rates for graduate schools, especially at the elite level. A typical attrition rate for an elite Law or Medical school is below 1%. A typical attrition rate for an elite Engineering or Science PhD program is 35-50%! MS programs aren't s studied, but nation wide, attrition rates are about 33% (I'd have to dig though my HN comments to find the cite for that one, and it was behind a paywall). So, considering how difficult all this is, outcomes must be much better for those STEM grads, right? Well, no, not really. CS is a good major at the undergrad level, and grads do pretty well. But again, at the elite level, top software developers, even from elite CS schools with grad degrees, just don't pull it in like dermatologists or radiologists. I read a pretty heartbreaking story about a woman who was denied the right to use sick leave for maternity leave from her grad program. My cousin, a radiologist, worked part time (20 hour weeks) for a while when she had a kid, and she still pulled down more than my salary as a developer. I know another woman who is an emergency medicine physician who did the same thing. They are so, so, so much better off not going into science. A RAND study found that the American aversion to STEM graduate degrees in favor of professional degrees is economically rational and shouldn't be a head scratcher. The head scratcher is why people still act like the only thing we need to do to get more people into science is "make it cool", or "improve middle school math", and so forth. We have got to stop acting like there's something surprising here. Science gets kids who are very smart and utterly devoted but perhaps lacking in wisdom, and who just can't believe that they might be in the bottom half of a cohort with high grades in STEM coursework and test scores above 95%ile. Or, alternatively, they are students who don't have these other options (US med and law schools are not nearly as accessible to international students as engineering and science PhD programs are). So if the "professions" are cut off to you because you aren't a US citizen, your decision to go into a graduate STEM program (especially if it fast tracks you to US residency) may be rational in a way that wouldn't hold for someone who already possesses US citizenship (who typically shun science PhD programs).

sqd 12y ago

The entering of people who are unable to do meaningful research into the science field is a blatant waste of social resources.

netcan 12y ago

The crux seems to be this: "They often praise the ability, the talent, or the intelligence too much. The opposite of this is the good process praise" I've been hearing variations for this for years, often in the context of comparing educational traditions of Asia to Europe-US. It seems each has their advantage. I haven't heard any smashingly convincing evidence that there is some insight which can be applied across the board. It mostly sounds like people picking a preference and arguing for it. I don't see whay science is special here. If I was to pick my own bias and go with it, it's that education at some point (I don't know if it's at 5 or 25) needs to get students to really internalize the actual process of learning and practice. Spend a quality hour a day on piano and you will get good at piano. Same goes for maths, painting, fiction writing, foreign languages and lucha libre. They needs to realize that they can get good at stuff. They need to realize how much work it is and they need to internalize that they (specifically) can do it. I have another pet peeve here. These discussions start with a problem and the immediate assumption is that the educational establishment needs to fix it. Well, the educational establishment is a huge lumbering giant and it's not necessarily the right man for the job. What about the ballet instructor, mother or godfather. We're talking more about child psychology than science education here. Raising kids better is certainly an admirable goal, but is this best addressed at a humanity-as-a-whole level? Do you have a daughter, nephew or godson? Can you make a difference as an adult in their life? Why not start there. At least it's something most of us can do something about.

nevergetenglish 12y ago
"They needs to realize that they can get good at stuff". Each time I begin to learn something new, as a new programming language, the beginnings are very hard and you feel dumb, this is the most difficult part. Once you have practice a lot, then all goes smoothly. Add to this that everyone seems to forget quickly how hard was to give the first steps. When you are learning something new people take for granted that you should be ready, but may times you are in that stage in which progress is hard and slow. So we should emphasize this point when we start learning.

nshepperd 12y ago

I don't think the main problem is what sort of praise these kids are being given. I remember being told, at a seminar on exactly this sort of thing, that more than half of students entering high school here (Australia) still did not understand fractions. The high school curriculum then steamrollers on to try and teach these kids about algebra, calculus, trigonometry. Not once do we stop to check that the students grasp the prerequisites necessary to understand the material, rather than just faking enough to get 50% on a test. Is it surprising that people develop learned helplessness about mathematics?

hedgew 12y ago

Forcing people who genuinely are not smart enough into sciences is sure to cause a lot of suffering and wasted time, though. Many of us here have social circles that consists only of the highly educated; in these bubbles it's easy to forget that many people simply are not capable of higher level mathematics, and are not capable of becoming even mediocre scientists. It's likely that the average child - and the vast majority of all children - would be happier and more productive in other professions. It's harsh, but try to judge your child's talents objectively, then encourage them to do what best for them.

sporkenfang 12y ago

Dweck's last comment really got struck me. By virtue of being taught to place authority and trust in the parent, the child generally wants to do what the parent says is "right". Some children, by virtue of their nature or peer pressure in their surroundings or whatever in addition to parental disapproval, begin to feel that negativity toward their interests reinforced. Had my exceedingly conservative grandparents and parents actually been able to "okay" my early interest in engineering and the sciences at the very least instead of telling me it was unfeminine (as well as my brother's early interests in fashion and mathematics, which were strongly labelled both at home and among our peers as faggy and uncool) I think both of us would have had less anguish and self-doubt and emotional issues as teens and in our early twenties. If children are stubborn enough, they can overcome this kind of negative reinforcement at home of the societal norms they see expressed at school and throughout much of whatever culture they belong to. However, as is the case with other people I grew up with who had similar backgrounds, without stubbornness and the willingness to recognize where one would be most happy and useful it is possible to drift for a long time without understanding why everything about one's identity is orthogonal to how it feels it should be, or even to just end up in a mediocre paper shuffling job forever. Imo it isn't about encouragement or positive reinforcement, but rather (as a parent) helping your children to figure out what they want to do and what they are interested in without projecting your own hopes and aspirations on them. Regardless of if your kid wants to live in a garage in Monterey and make sculptures of feet (or, hell, move to India and build water treatment plants, or study blue whales, or whatever), even if you think they'd make an amazing neurosurgeon/NFL player/xyz, don't push them to be something they're not. They get enough backlash from their peers and the rest of the world as it is. Too many kids don't just quit STEM (or never start) because they're pushed out of it or excluded for one reason or another, too many kids go into what seems socially acceptable because they aren't allowed space to grow into whatever the hell they are.