Reuven Feuerstein
and the vocabulary of emotions
QUID+ has learned from Reuven Feuerstein that it is important to allow children to express all of their emotions by letting them cry, show fear, anger or discomfort, and then help them calm down and guide them in understanding the nature of their feelings.
Reuven Feuerstein was born in Romania to Jewish parents. He began his career teaching as a young man in Bucharest at an institute that cared for the children of people who had been deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. While there, he developed an interest in studying psychology and pedagogy. In 1944 he too was sent to a concentration camp, an ordeal he managed to survive. In the late 1940s he moved to Israel, where he worked with children from all over the world who had escaped Nazi persecution. Thanks to his vast experience, Feuerstein developed the idea that all of us, regardless of what we have experienced, the traumas we have suffered and the obstacles we encounter, can develop our mental abilities and improve the way that our brains function at any time in our lives (learning potential).
