8:05am May 30, 2014

How many of us remember being in school and having something like this happen?

Someone’s trying to work through how to do something.

Then one kid – usually the ‘smart’ kid – starts cutting everyone off.

“No no no you CAN’T do it that way, it wouldn’t WORK, don’t you SEE?”

But, of course, the rest of the class doesn’t see, because nobody’s had the time to get their heads to that point yet.

I’m sure many of us here have been in both positions. We’ve been the 'smart’ kid. And we’ve been the other kids struggling to put things together, while someone yells over the top of us and makes us lose our place.

When you’re the 'smart’ kid, you’re just impatient. You know the right answer and you want everyone to get there by the quickest route possible, which happens to be by dropping everything they were doing and listening to you. Even though they won’t learn anything that way.

When you’re any of the other kids, you range from irritated to humiliated. Here you were, trying to do your thing, possibly trying to do something that was really damn hard for you. And right in the middle of your thought, here comes along someone who figures they know better, and they make you lose your place, lose your bearings, and probably lose all interest in doing it on your own.

And for all that, the 'smart’ kid isn’t always even right. They’re just right often enough to think they’re right. They’re right often enough to presume that they’re smarter than everyone else, that they have all the right answers, and that everyone else should just shut up and listen to them.

Scrolling through the tags the last few days, I’ve seen more than enough interactions that mirror that schoolroom interaction effect. Only instead of being with a math problem or a question on your English homework, they’re about questions of politics, ethics, and morality.

And the people who’ve deemed themselves the 'smart kids’ on these ones, aren’t people who necessarily know the subject matter any better. They’re just the ones who have learned, largely through echo chambers, that their view on something is right and that all other views are wrong.

Unfortunately the stakes for everyone involved are higher than school. For people on both sides, the stakes are survival.

But some things haven’t changed:

The 'smart kid’ still isn’t always right.
Their tendency to interrupt and correct everyone in ever-more-rude ways still spawns more irritation than enlightenment.
They can end up doing more harm than good towards other people who are trying to learn something at their own pace.

I’ve been 'the smart kid’ and I’ve been the kid just plodding along while 'the smart kid’ interrupts my train of thought. I know that 'the smart kid’ usually means no harm. But the role of 'the smart kid’ still involves a good deal more intellectual arrogance than most people in that role are willing to admit.

So when you see a bunch of people struggling to work out a solution to something. And you think you know better than them what the solution is. And you can tell that they haven’t thought through every avenue that you have thought through?

What about approaching the matter by asking questions? What about telling people pieces of information they didn’t know, without turning the knife by essentially calling them idiots (seriously, some of you who don’t use the word because it’s “ableist” are so much better at saying it in its worst possible senses, without saying it at all, than I’ll ever be) and accusing them of being horribly destructive? What about taking place in the conversation as a participant, rather than grabbing the reins and trying to lead?

Because regardless of the goal you have in mind, people can smell when you think you’re smart and we’re stupid. And it won’t get you good results. Ever. Unless by good results, you mean intimidation. If intimidation is what you’re going for, then sometimes you’ll get it. Especially among people who’ve been on the wrong end of this dynamic many times before in our lives. I hope it’s not what you’re after, though. Because that would just be wrong.

Notes: