The Importance of Delight and of Struggle

Children will naturally delight in the feast of great ideas set before them.  They will savour them and grow in their ability to enjoy and celebrate their relations with persons, ideas, and creation.  But they will also at times struggle.  We consider the struggle to be as essential to the learning process as the delight.  Children must learn to labour with problems not yet grasped, to remain on task when uncertain of the outcome, to struggle to completion when mind and hand are tired, to experience the rewards and negative consequences of their actions.  There will be no growth in character without this struggle.

Foremost among the enemies of the delight and the struggle necessary for the cultivation of a learner are entertainment and indulgence.  For in the classroom, both entertainment and indulgence encourage passivity.  To grow, a student must be strenuously engaged in the work of learning.  Thus, Ambleside teachers, while often creative in their presentations, make no effort to entertain their students.  And Ambleside teachers, while being loving so as not to overwhelm, will not be indulgent.