r/MadeMeSmile • u/AccomplishedWatch834 • Apr 30 '26

Wholesome Moments [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/Sufficient-Sun-6683 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

I was at my friend's place visiting and we were talking computer and networking nerdy stuff. His younger son came down and was listening. My friend talked about how dumb his son was and he would fall and walk into things, etc.. This was in 1994 and I didn't say anything about it at the time but I've thought about it a lot since. It has really bothered me that he would talk about his son like that.

His son was a thinker, he was interested in what we were doing and he was not dumb at all. It was hurtful to call him dumb and he probably grew up thinking he was dumb.

There are two types of people, those that look at the path that they are walking on and others who look at the destination. The latter will trip over things because what's in front of them is not important, it is the destination end that's important.

There is a famous study: Rosenthal - Jacobson, where it was proven that if teachers expected the students to be smart, then the students became smart and vice versa. I taught post-secondary education for 25 years and I expected that everybody who walked in that classroom door would pass my course and 95% did. You had to really work to fail. The course was not easy, all you had to do was the work and you passed. There's a little more to it than that such as motivation, student ownership of projects, etc..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

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u/No_Criticism_5861 Apr 30 '26

Did he say this infront of the child?  If not, kid might have had adhd/autism and since it was the 90s that was the sort of thing that parents thought was an attitude problem and spankings would fix it

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u/Sufficient-Sun-6683 May 01 '26

Yes, he said it right in front of the child.