
Too Many Kids Quit Science Because They Don't Think They're Smart - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/too-many-kids-quit-science-because-they-dont-think-theyre-smart/382165/?single_page=true
======
nagrom
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.

~~~
scottlocklin
I almost stopped reading the article after the sentence, "A self-esteem expert
offers a way out of the conundrum." I should have. This is psychobabble
rubbish, written by people who have not done science, and who do not know the
life histories of people who have studied science to any degree. The main
encouragement I had from my parents was to visit the library. They definitely
discouraged me from taking apart the blender and refrigerator when I was in
the 3rd grade. They did eventually buy me and my sisters a radio shack
computer; there was no special encouragement for me to hack assembler as a
kid, but I did, and my sisters used it to play video games. Curiosity comes
from within. The blank slate theory is as rubbish as the theory of
reincarnation.

I share your two hypotheses to the point I consider them ansatzes. Most of my
peers have Ph.D.'s in hard sciences or engineering as I do. Most of them
wasted their time on their thesis research; it's just a certificate meaning
"certifiably smart, persistent, and able to do self guided study." I don't
particularly regret getting my underwear drawer liner autograph from the
governator. It was a poor financial decision, but I had fun playing with big
toys, and it provided enough meaning to my life I avoided ending up a glue
sniffer or drunkard.

Attempting to convince more people to do this is a fool's errand: we can't
even employ the ones we have. I've been lucky in that I have mostly worked on
interesting things and been reasonably well paid for it, but doubling or
tripling the number of science people in the world is foolish unless you give
them something useful to do. My last job hunt, I ended up talking to an awful
lot of people who thought a good use of my time would be building data
pipelines to some Hadoop atrocity. You don't need a Ph.D. in physics or
machine learning to do that. Yet a lot of Ph.D. types are doing this sort of
plumbing for a living, because there are not enough jobs doing actual science.

~~~
weeksie
Carol Dweck hasn't done science? Why would you say that? Do you say that
because you don't feel that psychology is a science or is it because of
something about her work in particular?

In any case my impression is that the article was about different strategies
for improving achievement. I'm not a psychologist, but I've seen some pretty
convincing articles that show that praise for how smart a kid is versus praise
for how hard they work affects how they handle failure. Increasing
perseverance would be a good way to be more successful in academia, I would
imagine.

~~~
hamilton
Agreed. It's a shame to write off Dweck's research because of poor phrasing on
the part of the writer of the article. Her work is massively important. If
you're not willing to understand the psychological underpinnings of
motivation, then you're leaving out a big part of the puzzle.

------
jbob2000
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."

~~~
aidenn0
This is one parenting technique that seems to be a part of a lot of different
parenting classes, philosophies, &ct. but is, IMO underused.

Most kids crave attention from the adults they look up to. Merely paying
attention to something and expressing an interest can be hugely rewarding
without needing to praise.

The flip side of this is why parents who have busy schedules for one reason or
another often have kids with behavioral issues; the only reliable way for the
kid to get attention is to piss off their parents.

------
mtbottle
> 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.

~~~
asolove
Those who are interested in this will want to read the book "The drama of the
gifted child."

~~~
sgpl
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/...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-
Success/dp/0345472322)

------
simmons
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
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
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.

------
westoncb
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.

------
mi3law
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.

------
jmtame
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.

------
netcan
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
"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.

------
jamesash
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
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.

------
sjs382
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. :)

------
navait
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.

~~~
InclinedPlane
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.

------
ivan_ah
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/)

------
Torgo
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.

~~~
ps4fanboy
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.

------
iharhajster
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).

------
jiggy2011
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.

~~~
simmons
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.

------
xorcist
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
> 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).

------
freyr
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.

------
nshepperd
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?

------
sporkenfang
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.

------
WhitneyLand
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.

------
tn13
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.

~~~
seanflyon
> 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"

------
threatofrain
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?"

------
estatemanjoe
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.

------
hedgew
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.

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

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

------
digital-rubber
"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." \-
Socrates

Maybe they are all little socrates'es

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

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

------
geebee
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).

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

