BY STEVE NUZUM
Psychologist Lev Vygotsky coined the term “zone of proximal development,” (ZPD) a concept which prioritizes the moves a learner makes from being able to understand and act with assistance, to being able to understand and act independently.
For his part, Martin Luther King, Jr., voiced a similar idea at the societal level when he wrote about “a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth”.
Necessarily, Vygotsky’s view of education, and Dr. King’s view of societal progress, both require individuals to feel at least slight discomfort. The idea of the ZPD holds in constructive tension the importance of adult assistance and support and the importance of moving into the unknown to work and think without that support. By “scaffolding” assignments that are intentionally just beyond the learner’s current comfort zone, we’re helping students move into greater comfort with doing things on their own. King’s view of “constructive tension” requires a willingness to engage in nonviolent conflict, and he draws an explicit connections between education and direct action, writing, “Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
Perhaps this is one reason our society continues to fixate on standardization and “objective” measurements of learning: because they ultimately help the teacher, parent, or other authority figure maintain at least an illusion of control over learners, instead of helping learners develop the skills necessary to exercise more control over their own lives. We seek to avoid conflict, and in doing so we also thwart opportunities for growth.
Perhaps that’s also the real origin of the focus of anti-public school organizations and activists during the last several years on “discomfort” allegedly felt by students. The pushback against constructive tension was very real when King wrote “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” and it is probably no coincidence that the “parental rights” activists of King’s time voiced similar slogans to the ones we’re hearing from Moms for Liberty and other pro-censorship organizations today. When Lexington-Richland 5 students complained about being assigned Between the World and Me, by TeNehisi Coates, in their AP Language course, they claimed the book somehow made them feel “uncomfortable” and “ashamed to be Caucasian”. (Coates wrote in detail about the ban in his new book, The Message.)
Whether or not the students were being sincere, those words echo a national playbook with a reactionary political motivation, one largely framed by ant- “CRT” architect Chris Rufo, who has directly attacked 1960s “radicals,” many of whom pushed for the kind of positive social change King spent his life championing.
The district decided to ban the book from the course rather than giving the individual students an alternative text. In doing so, they deprived all students at the school the opportunity to sit with ideas that might cause them to think beyond their own experience, and ultimately to move outside of their own ZPDs. Whether or not they ultimately agreed with the message of the book-- which is a profound, personal, and moving memoir that grapples with Coates’ own shifting views on America and race as he considers what life will be like for his Black son-- they could have benefited from exploring and unpacking Coates’ arguments. (That, after all, is what the study of rhetoric, the topic of AP Language, is.)
The advantage of challenging times and uncomfortable situations is that they seem to force us to reevaluate what is important, and what is possible, in a more hands-on and realistic way than we might when we’re comfortable. If we accept that we’re all students, we can also choose to accept that discomfort may be necessary for us to not only grow and change ourselves, but to help our society productively grow and change.
Elections are always times of change, and the most recent election represents major changes at the national and state levels in terms of priorities and approaches to educational policy. As I wrote a few weeks back, this is a time of great anxiety for many students (and for many adults, regardless of how they voted).
But I hope this transitional period will also be a time for reflection, and ultimately for organization. Arguably the most vital function of organizations-- including labor unions and advocacy organizations-- is bringing people together not because they have everything in common, but because they have specific things in common. Bringing people together who might otherwise not work together, in order to accomplish goals they can’t accomplish alone.
In the process, they make us learn more about one another, they combat division with solidarity and negative conflict with constructive debate. Just as students need scaffolding to move from a life of relying on others to a life that is self-directed, we all need scaffolding from groups and individuals who have traveled some version of the road before us already to help us channel frustration and even fear into work that benefits all of us.
My advice is to choose groups that are action-motivated, that care more about growth than about an illusion of already understanding everything, that value openness and democratic norms over exclusivity and a maintenance of the status quo. Maintain a healthy skepticism of all organizations-- the kind of skepticism that encourages you to improve them from the inside if possible, and to hold them to a high standard.
It’s nice when public policy and democratic processes go our way, but in my experience, there is even more opportunity for engagement with other people in times of uncertainty and change.
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