"I'm Smarter Than You Think I Am"

A few months ago a television news show had a feature on a wonderful teacher.  Each year she had an assignment for every student -- Write down something about yourself that I don't know that I should know.

The responses were at the root of her understanding her students, and they told her of family situations or interests or hobbies or pain or joy.

And there was one child who wrote an especially important message to her -- "I'm smarter than you think I am."

Wow.

On an ALS message board I just saw a link to a presentation given by a respected, world-famous
ALS clinical researcher on the importance of clinical trials.  She prefaced her message by talking about the real difficulties of doing clinical research in a world of uncurated information on the internet and fake news.  She used terms like "anti-science," "poor education," "ignorance fighting proper science."

And all I wanted to say was, "We're smarter than you think we are."