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Old 02-22-2010, 02:50 PM   #39
Basia Halliop
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 711
Canada
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Re: Jamming a technique

quote:"I believe one is coming to the dojo to be frustrated and NOT to be comfortable. "

Well, neither, in a way... personally, I'm coming to the dojo to learn. Often frustration is useful to that, for example in some of the ways you point out. But on the other hand, frustration isn't the goal in itself, it's an end towards a goal, even if the goal is as simple as learning to overcome frustration. If it's paired with learning or is caused by a level of difficulty that you can just overcome if you really stretch yourself and do the things you suggest, it can be good and can push you on and teach you. But it's also perfectly possible to be frustrated AND not learning anything.

Frustration doesn't AUTOMATICALLY lead to a person learning to overcome frustration and find things out for themselves. It has to be the right amount of frustration at the time - otherwise you won't necessarily learn those good traits, and may actually instead get what's called 'learned helplessness' (when people or animals learn to stop trying - this is fairly well studied so there are many examples with both animals and people).

It's the experience of _overcoming_ frustration that leads to those qualities of persistence and ingenuity - so to get the desired effect, the frustration needs to be at a level that you know the subject will overcome it. Persistence in the face of frustration can then also be taught by gradually increasing the level of frustration so that each time the person (or animal) takes slightly longer to get the response they are looking for, but each time they eventually get it and are rewarded for their persistence.

Last edited by Basia Halliop : 02-22-2010 at 03:03 PM.
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