Comment by kragen

kids struggle with grammar, pronunciation, pragmatics, vocabulary, etc. they do so naturally, and maybe you've forgotten your own struggles, but they're very real

i think we can do better than we are doing at math education, much better, but there is no way to learn math, or anything else, without diligent effort. it won't happen by passive absorption. you can listen to people speaking spanish all day every day for years without learning more than a few words of spanish if you don't make any effort

curiosity is one possible motivation for making that effort, but the immediate result of the effort is, at first, failure. that's true of language, it's true of playing the guitar, it's true of programming, it's true of throwing clay on a potter's wheel. that failure feels like being clumsy, weak, or stupid, depending on the form it takes

and that's what the article is talking about. trying to do things that are beyond your mental ability makes you aware of, and frustrated with, that mental ability. that's not curiosity, it's feeling stupid. it's also how you increase your mental ability!