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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't that conclusion make you feel somewhat superior to people who don't share it? If not, shouldn't it?

No. As an educator (HS Maths) in order to effectively both educe and induce understanding it's never about feeling superior. That feeling is so very obstructive to a student's willingness to listen and perhaps more importantly to the deeper intrinsic satisfaction I get when a student says "OH! I get it!"

That's a really interesting question. I guess I can't judge myself without bias, and I've most often been told I'm too hard on myself. So again the answer would be no.

I was a HS math teacher too. When a student gets to "OH! I get it!", I think that they feel superior to themselves a minute ago, and to also to their buddy who doesn't get it yet, and those things are not really separable. And both feelings act as positive motivation, along with the intrinsic joy of understanding. You can ask them to indulge the later and ignore the former, but not with an expectation of success.

Some of my best students were motivated by their competitiveness with someone else in the class.

Yes. Exactly.

Not if it's an observation.

Why wouldn't you feel superior to people less observant than yourself? Does a more observant person not have a greater worth, all else equal?

To be clear, do you think everyone has equal worth, from the greatest ecologist or humanitarian to the most vegetative coma patient? If so you are being consistent. But that seems to limit value to self-worth, and ignore value to others.

I might misunderstand your comment since English is not my mother tongue, but worth regarding what? If you need a poem, an engineer might be worthless; if I need a bridge, I wouldn’t call a poet.

The greatest ecologist and the patient in coma have the same worth as in “both have the same right to live, to be happy, etc.”.

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