I’ve been thinking a lot about transition and growth. This has been brought upon by my readings in Jung, the Bible and the Odyssey as well as instances of journeys in my own life. . In each of those texts, there are examples of the challenge to change and become something or someone different. Telemachus intends to become a mature man. Abram is challenged by God and becomes Abraham, and Jung’s process of integration that forces us to accept what we hold in the shadow and use attributes from the shadow to become our true selves.
In all instances, there’s reasonable fear as to what may come of the process. If you don’t take the risk, you stay stagnant. There’s need for faith, trust, and courage after making the decision.
And while this is true of character development, it’s also true of idea and knowledge development– especially in schools. Students need to take cognitive risks to build new knowledge and to change their understandings. And yet, we don’t often do this. We allow kids to stay comfortable in the status quo and rarely challenge them with ideas and work that is rigorous and hard.
But the student who comes out on the other side of a difficult task successfully is a new student.
Boiled down, the process is essentially the appearance of a challenge, the acceptance or denial of the challenge, then, if accepted, the working through a challenge. While there’s no guarantee that the challenge will be overcome, there are always lessons to be learned from engaging in the challenge.
But if the challenge is never accepted, nothing is learned.