I was explaining the article, not making a statement about how learning works. My comment was poorly phrased. I agree with everything you said, except Vygotsky

I was explaining the article, not making a statement about how learning works. My comment was poorly phrased. I agree with everything you said, except Vygotsky. :) Vygotsky is worth reading, since: - He is evidence-based. He isn't just a theorist. He cites studies. This contrasts with educational philosophers which dominated literature of the time. - He is universally misquoted in US education literature, usually to say banally obvious things. - He is brilliant. - In the concept of ZPD, US education literature usually says the literal opposite of what Vygotsky said. Do you really thing the concept of scaffolding didn't exist before 1900? Curiously, Vygotsky precisely has a passage about (positive) experience with throwing special-needs students into the deep end of the pool on tasks they can't succeed with, and contradicts the (incorrect) intuition behind the teaching process implied by: "Ultimately the child needs to internalize these basics to succeed in more complex projects with a sense of independence." To be specific, a child does need to ultimately internalize these, but one of the best ways to do so is through a certain type of struggle, rather than breaking down into little pieces, in the ways consistently attributed to him.