I’ve watched more points lost to stubbornness than to actual lack of knowledge, and that’s not an exaggeration for effect — it’s just what shows up in the data when I review a missed section with a student. The kids who struggle most with this rule tend to be the ones who’ve never really been taught that walking away from a problem is a strategy rather than a failure. Once that clicks, it’s one of the fastest score gains I know how to produce, because it doesn’t require learning anything new. It just requires unlearning one bad instinct.
