Comment by kzz102
I want to distinguish two sources of "feeling of stupidity". One come from the challenge of grasping a difficult concept. The other is the smack on the head when you fail to see a simple but brilliant insight. In my view, you should not feel stupid in either situations, and the teacher should try to ward you against this feeling.
For the first type, I argue it's simply the resistance to a new mental model. The article's example of epsilon-delta language is a perfect example. It's a new way of thinking that takes time (and it did historically) to sink in. Competing on how fast you grasp this new concept is stupid. When the new mode of thinking becomes natural, it won't care how long you took to adapt to it.
For the second type, it's simply an impossible standard to reliably have eureka moments. Clearly, smarter people will have more of these than the average people, but no one can do this reliably. On the other hand, while it takes more work for us mortals to have these insights than a genius, there are plenty of ways to get there that don't require a super high IQ. Teachers should try to foster these moments because they are huge confidence builders, but try to minimise the impact of someone showing off their brilliance.
the two types are nice !
the author likens your first type to building "mental" roads, which form new pathways of cognition, and takes time, and has emotional resistance, and requires conscious effort and practice to carve out. also to relate the roads to other roads correctly, so the mental map of roads is consistent, and can be traversed.
the problem is that most students do not grasp ideas fully and develop facility with it. when this happens, the foundations are shaky, and facility is lost. then, they label themselves as incapable which leads to a vicious cycle where, the belief of being stupid leads to more stupidity.
the second type is where the roads (ideas) are there, but a route from source to destination is not clear, and the aha moment is when you see the full path in the mental eye.