I ran into this quote about 16 years ago, and it made everything I thought I wanted to do as a college teacher seem second-rate and second best:
If you have to choose one essential requirement for healthy human development, it is to engage in joint activity with someone with whom you have an irrational attachment. Someone who is crazy about you. And professionals should not do that. Because you can’t do it for everybody. And yet every child needs to feel that – you know what I mean! All children are nice, but this child – I’m going to go crazy! And that is what the child needs for normal development. (“Two Tiered Society,” page 9 – this is a transcript of a talk that Bronfenbrenner gave at the Itasca seminar in 1985.)
Posted by shea0017 at May 13, 2005 11:48 AM