Your starting "of course" presumes that you are right. I'm disagreeing because I truly and honestly think that you're wrong.
People who are struggling with math, even in elementary school, will often say things like, "That's so simple, why couldn't I get it? I must be stupid!" I've heard this over and over again in a wide variety of contexts. Including from my own children. We honestly believe that if it is simple, it should be easy to understand. And so the experience of having struggled with something simple, leaves us feeling stupid.
Even people with an incredible amount of math success, wind up feeling this. And pretty much universally have also developed coping mechanisms for it. But the experience itself is pretty much universal. My son felt it in middle school when he was struggling with long-division.
Now does a poor education system make this experience more likely? Does it serve us poorly? Absolutely! I consider it a crime that Singapore has developed a better way of teaching elementary math, and we have not adopted it. Singapore is now moving to #1 across different subjects according to PISA, and Western education systems aren't even curious about how.
However that is orthogonal to the key point here. Which is that math tends to be simple in a way that our brains aren't built for. And when we're confronted with how hard it is for us to learn something simple, it is easy for us to feel stupid. This can be very demoralizing. And it is very helpful for us to learn to accept and deal with that feeling.
My ‘of course’ to @ColinWright was intended to be tongue in cheek playful, and not presume anything. But I accept it might come off a different way than I intended.
I think (like with others in this subthread) that I have mislead you or am being misunderstood or both. I’m familiar with the feeling of stupidity in math, and I’d agree that it’s useful when/if harnessed. I’m calling the process of accepting it and dealing with it “curiosity”, partly since if curiosity is missing then people tend to feel shame and anxiety with their stupidity and tend to avoid math and give up on learning it.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as right and wrong here. I’m making a point of view framing distinction, not disagreeing with the article or the quote in the article. I think that “stupidity” isn’t the best word choice in general, even though it might work for math researchers in this case. That word comes with many overloaded and negative meanings that aren’t accurate to what the article is really trying to say.
I think that stupidity is the perfect word. It is how people actually feel, and the word that they are overwhelmingly likely to use. Therefore using language that connects with the experience means that you're saying something which is accessible in the difficult moments that need to be dealt with.
Curiosity is a tool for dealing with it. But it's but one tool. And we need a whole toolkit.
People who are struggling with math, even in elementary school, will often say things like, "That's so simple, why couldn't I get it? I must be stupid!" I've heard this over and over again in a wide variety of contexts. Including from my own children. We honestly believe that if it is simple, it should be easy to understand. And so the experience of having struggled with something simple, leaves us feeling stupid.
Even people with an incredible amount of math success, wind up feeling this. And pretty much universally have also developed coping mechanisms for it. But the experience itself is pretty much universal. My son felt it in middle school when he was struggling with long-division.
Now does a poor education system make this experience more likely? Does it serve us poorly? Absolutely! I consider it a crime that Singapore has developed a better way of teaching elementary math, and we have not adopted it. Singapore is now moving to #1 across different subjects according to PISA, and Western education systems aren't even curious about how.
However that is orthogonal to the key point here. Which is that math tends to be simple in a way that our brains aren't built for. And when we're confronted with how hard it is for us to learn something simple, it is easy for us to feel stupid. This can be very demoralizing. And it is very helpful for us to learn to accept and deal with that feeling.