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When I was little, I was often "the cleverest little boy in the room". Now that doesn't mean I was the smartest kid in the room, far from it. It means I was clever, people told me I was clever, and I made damn sure other people knew I was clever: answering before others, cracking
jokes, etc. I am sure, when I was a toddler, I was the kind of kid who would walk up to the very front of reading circle and try to engage the person reading with all of my cleverness, while a room full of other kids were sitting behind me following directions. One of the reasons
I'm sure this happened even though I am too young to remember it is because I'm a dad of a very smart young man, who I adore with my whole heart. And when I first started my PhD I was awarded a scholarship and I stayed home with him as a toddler and his baby sister. And I took
them to countless library kids' readings. And I saw all the clever little boys do clever little boy things, like walk up to the reader, in front of all of the kids who could follow directions and sit nicely, to impress them with his cleverness. My smart young guy would try this,
being clever himself. And probably 99% of the time, people would encourage him! They'd laugh at his jokes and be impressed by his answers. But I'd always run from the back of the room (baby sister under my arm) and grab him and sit him on my lap. Later, or some times immediately
I'd walk him aside and explain that being clever didn't mean talking over the rest of the group, or blocking other kids' view of the story, or jumping in out of turn. He's older now, and although he's a wonderful kid we still talk a lot about thinking about how other kids have
the same desires as he does, what would happen if everyone acted out of turn, how it would feel to have his fun disrupted by an overly clever kid. It's an ongoing process. And it helps me too. I am not a perfect person by any stretch. I still have a long way to go in terms of
understanding how I've benefited from inequalities, how I've perpetuated them, and how I've hurt people by not taking things seriously when I should have. But I'm making sure that my son is loved more than he'll ever know, and part of that love is helping him be a good human,
even if it might not be as exciting in the moment as showing everyone he's the cleverest little boy in the room.
I wonder, quite a bit these days, how much different might Twitter and academia and Big Science be if they weren't so full of the cleverest little boys in the room?
I wonder, quite a bit these days, how much different might Twitter and academia and Big Science be if they weren't so full of the cleverest little boys in the room?
