What is the meaning of the italicized "do" in this sentence?

A child meets this kind of discipline every time he tries to do something, which is why it is so important in school to give children more chances to do things, instead of just reading or listening to someone talk (or pretending to).

Three Disciplines for Children by John Holt

And also, what does pretending to mean here?

Do is a Act, a pro-verb used for active verbs. In this case, the "do something" is used as an ambiguous way to indicate that the child is disciplined any time he performs a given action, where the action can consist of any number of things. "Something" is being used as a filler for a given verb, and "do" is indicating that it is a verb as opposed to a noun.

Pretending to is referring back to the previous phrase. "...Instead of just reading or listening to someone talk (or pretending to [read or listen to someone talk])".