I have two thoughts I’d like to share; neither is about science education but both are directly relevant to the discussion at hand.

First, when you said: “as soon as you figure something out, then it’s on to the next thing where you feel stupid. This has always been tough on my ego, personally.”

… that made me think of something I used to talk about with my employees: an understanding of your own knowledge. We used to ask employees to rate their own performance, knowledge etc. The consistent result: newer employees rated their own capabilities higher than experienced ones. The more you know, the more you realize you *don’t* know. Given how you felt in the constant slog up the physics grad student learning curve, it’s too bad that nobody was around to help you see what you had accomplished. It’s probably a good idea to take a look behind you now and then. For me, teaching others is a great reinforcer for my knowledge *and* ego.

Second, the NPR story about the kindergarten student’s grandparent silently wishing for them to fail reminded me of a friend’s wedding. I gave a speech at the reception, and looking back over my own life and choices, I decided to wish them conflict. And I did so publicly in front of their family and friends and new in-laws. Experiencing (and surviving) conflict of all types has been the most potent driver of my own psyche and self-confidence over the years. I got a couple of shocked looks from my friend’s new bride and others in the audience, but later than night and the next day some older members of the audience shared their approval with me. Their lives had been specifically enriched by dealing with conflict, and doing it together with their spouse.

The Fixed v Growth dynamic looks a bit simplistic but as a theoretical model it matches up with several people I know, and does that well. I am interested to look up the author for ideas on how to reinforce the Growth mentality in children.

There was another blog, I can’t remember which one, which mentioned that as a graduate student, the person always felt stupid. Because as soon as you figure something out, then it’s on to the next thing where you feel stupid. This has always been tough on my ego, personally.

The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

I dig that concept but wonder how I go about instilling that idea into my younger kids, that its OKAY not to know the answer because academics and life in general is all about constantly seeking

http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-like-feeling-stupid.html

Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the power of failure.

Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematical victory. First-time success is usually a fluke. First-time failure, by contrast, is expected; it is the natural order of things.

Failure is how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase describing a good cook as “she who has broken many pots.”
…

Read the whole thing at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6196795

Perhaps the real problem is that we do not prepare our children to deal with failure. We think it is a bad thing, when in fact, it’s how we learn. That’s possibly the most important thing I took away from my martial arts training. I succeeded only after repeated failures, and with each failure I got a little bit better.

We don’t respect failure, we pass that onto our kids, and they learn to be afraid to fail. So when they do fail — as they must — instead of learning and growing from it, they receive a blow to their self-esteem.