the irresolvable it is the pedagogy, not a bug
The fact that it’s not at all clear day-to-day what this it and caring mean, or how you can be expected both to care passionately and not care at all, that huge amounts of internal psychic energy get expended on trying to come to some acceptable understanding of all this stuff, particularly from 16 to like 18, is not accidental or a weakness in E.T.A. pedagogy, in Schacht’s opinion
Context
The endnote gloss that makes the paradox load-bearing: the day-to-day unclarity of the creed — what "it" is, how you can "both to care passionately and not care at all," the "huge amounts of internal psychic energy" burned trying to resolve it from 16 to 18 — "is not accidental or a weakness in E.T.A. pedagogy." The confusion is the curriculum. The alternative, the endnote notes, is deLint's "clipboard and reductive statistics, which at least afford you a firm idea of where you stand" — the seductive false clarity of pure ranking. Schtitt's pedagogy deliberately withholds that comfort; the point is to keep the players suspended in a question the body can answer but the mind can't.