Re: negative ZPDs

Peter Smagorinsky (psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu)
Fri, 10 Oct 1997 13:09:23 -0500 (CDT)

It strikes me that the idea of a "negative" zpd is quite value-laden. I
saw one of those TV shows, 48 Hours I think, last summer, where they
followed a small militia in Utah (i think). The militia members were proud
to be raising their kids as battle-ready Nazis and lived in remote places
in order to isolate them--to restrict their zpd's, I'd say--so as to create
a developmental context designed to perpetuate their own values (my
theoretical overlay and language, not theirs). To me, we've got a negative
zpd here, but to them it was positive. I'm still not convinced that
activity theory includes any apparatus for making judgments on notions of
telos, prolepsis, etc. and the deliberate social structuring of cultural
trajectories.

Peter