#50 Growth zone

      “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”          Chinese proverb

 

     “Growing beings require shelter in inverse proportion to their age or maturity. The world of the very young is made simpler and safer in various ways, and these buffers are only gradually removed as the growing child becomes both ready for, and in need of, greater complexity and challenge. ‘Frustration,’ Freud once noted; ‘is the motor of human development,’ but of course this does not mean that we expose people to as much frustration as we can as fast as possible. There is, to adapt the famous phrase from Vygotsky, a zone of proximal frustration (which if adequately proximal, will be experienced not as frustration at all, but as enrichment).”
     Higgins C. Human conditions for teaching: The place of pedagogy in Arendt's Vita Activa. Teachers College Record 2010; 112(2): 407-445.

     “Learning takes place at the point of tension between credulous appreciation and wary dismissal. We are all pretty good at the two extremes: yes / no, like / dislike, agree / disagree, accept / reject. Exploration and discovery, however, call for an abandonment of this + / - dichotomy and an occupation of the open middle ground. … ‘being able to preserve one’s orientation toward openness.’”     G. Wallis

Photo: David A. Lovas