That, plus sometimes the teacher laughing too or exageratingly pointing out that you don't know "to make the other kids feel better and show them no one knows eveything" (I wish I was kidding. I am not.) was really painful to me as a kid. Now I'm in college and in 4 years I've voluntarily spoken up 2 times. (one of them I was right but the prof mockingly disagreed. If you're wondering, the question was "what does Buntstein mean", I said "multicolored rock" but she wanted "red rock").
But!!! as adults we can change this little by little, and that's a big part of why I want to work in museums with kids. I now have the power to show that every remark is worth a second look and no answer is dumb. I've had a little girl answer "wikipedia" when I asked why XIIIth century monks kept writing on parchment instead of paper (the answer was easy to find given the context), everyone made fun of her but with my colleague we kept thinking about it and she found her thought process.
What she blurted out was just her conclusion, and when her classmate and teacher (!!!) laughed she went back to her shell instead of getting a chance to explain. Turns out that for this girl, you can easily keep parchment (the answer we were looking for), so it allowed them to build archives compiling all of the time's knowledge... which is actually the first wikipedia. Let me tell you, when my colleague explained this and said that it was actually a pretty smart reasoning, the girl was beaming with newfound pride and happiness.
But!!! as adults we can change this little by little, and that's a big part of why I want to work in museums with kids. I now have the power to show that every remark is worth a second look and no answer is dumb. I've had a little girl answer "wikipedia" when I asked why XIIIth century monks kept writing on parchment instead of paper (the answer was easy to find given the context), everyone made fun of her but with my colleague we kept thinking about it and she found her thought process.