ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on both the student's relationship to the learning task and the dynamics of teacher-pupil relationships. He or she has to find a place among the year-group, both in and outside the classroom, and to make a relationship with teachers and with other adults, and in this human context to engage with all that the formal learning process requires. This is a matrix of relationships, all of which reciprocally influence each other both of these with inputs from each direction and child to the learning task. School places two demands on children: they are supposed to learn things, and they are also supposed to learn how to make friends, to play, to find a way for themselves outside the family, and to adapt to the complex expectations of an institution. Containment is an onion-like phenomenon in structure-many layers is required when the task is the growth of mind, and this is the primary task of the school.
