Comments | flamingjune07: followup to "seeming smart"

flamingjune07

followup to "seeming smart"

May 18, 2010 13:50

It occurs to me that professors or peers who react to students who "seem smart" with vague praise and appreciation might actually be doing such students a pretty serious disservice ( Read more... )

Comments 5

beeporama May 18 2010, 18:30:24 UTC

Maybe, like me reading this comment, they are impressed but not intellectually up to the task of critiquing it.

flamingjune07 May 18 2010, 19:04:17 UTC

Badum-ching.

(Note to self: avoid posting to livejournal directly after writing academic papers for several days in a row).

beeporama May 18 2010, 19:24:38 UTC

Note to self: read linked articles before giving witty one-line responses.

Now that I read that, what I get from it is that the most valuable thing professors/peers can do is to spread encouragement around. Give everyone a shot at the "Pygmalion Effect." (You can tell by the conclusion "Life's not fair" that they are a student of Philosophy, not Sociology or Feminist Studies!) This isn't new. My favorite proponent was Dale Carnegie: "Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to." Goodness knows the only reason people think I'm "smart" today is because I got a lot of praise and attention for being "smart" as a child.

Of course you are also right that the fire of constructive criticism is needed to temper a sharp mind. A good teacher or colleague strikes the balance of giving you suitable praise, expectations, and criticism.

flamingjune07 May 18 2010, 20:01:18 UTC

I don't know, I think there's a difference between having high expectations of someone and spreading encouragement around. Of course I don't want to advocate for professors becoming cold-hearted despots over their students or anything, but I know that I at least would feel better, as a student, if I felt like I could depend on my professors to point out where they think I might be heading astray if/when they see it, which might require some pretty involved criticism. That sort of thing is the sort of thing you only do for people you have reasonably high expectations for, though -- if you have a student you think is kind of "meh" and they write a so-so paper, what's to say about it?

thatwhileifound May 18 2010, 22:50:32 UTC

I was always the "smart kid" in class. I've turned into the adult version of that at work too... As you might remember, I never really put my effort into high school and ended up getting my equivalency after moving up here ( ... )