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This is quite lovely.  I'd add that learning, if it's real learning, must change the fabric of those daily lives and those selves.  I don't think fourteen year olds should feel short-changed if they go to class and aren't learning things that directly pertain to the problems absorbing most of their time and energy... like wondering if the cool kids will start inviting him to parties if he makes the baseball team this year, or worrying that Johny won't ask her to the Christmas dance because she's not pretty enough (and some fourteen year olds certainly have more interesting problems).  But learning should be something that incrementally changes you, that helps you evolve from a person with a narrow, petty, present-tense range of concerns to as broad a range as possible... it should push back the boundaries and diversify the terrain of your psychic landscape.  And since everything is a construction of the brain, this will widen the scope and vary the obstacle courses of your life.