Students, well intentioned or otherwise, are poorly served by the idea that students and teachers are intellectual and social equals and that a student’s opinion is as good as a professor’s knowledge. Rather than disabusing young people of these myths, college too often encourages them, with the result that people end up convinced they’re actually smarter than they are. As the social psychologist David Dunning has noted, “The way we traditionally conceive of ignorance—as an absence of knowledge—leads us to think of education as its natural antidote. But education, even when done skillfully,
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