profundity

Richard E. Miller, a guest speaker on campus last week and this, says that, in order to become mature thinkers, we need to have a "profound encounter with boredom" followed by a "profound encounter with frustration." I don't know that I entirely agree with him, but I do know the claim is going to make me think a bit. He says that the problem, these-a-days, is that kids don't ever have to really wallow in the boredom--whenever they start to get stuck a bit, they just fire off a text message, or go xBox, or distract themselves with one of a hundred distractions. So they never get to that point where they become so bored that they actually discover that things are interesting--that they can be engaged by things that don't immediately capture their stunted attentions. The concept makes a lotta sense to me, actually, and I wonder how teachers can encourage more profound boredom. Not just the average, run-of-the-mill kind of boredom, I mean. Most teachers are pretty good at that already...