Loved every sentence, so much resonated with me. Thanks for writing this. I hope others will read it and be encouraged to try it, too :)

Loved your post, Karen, on so many levels. You articulated so well some of my half-formed ideas: that creating a safe learning environment contradicts with uncertainty of life and might not prepare learners to deal with those risks. That certainty, when it exists, is temporal and contextual, unlikely to be universal.
Now your last question, about whether we should teach only the concrete..because all else is fleeting and ephemeral. This question assumes the important thing we are teaching is content, when i think the important thing we should be teaching is how-to-learn, and even that is not a fixed process...