“As in skateboarding, it’s the concrete, the scrapes, and hitting your shin on metal that leads to improvement - getting better and keeping you sharp.” (Van Doren, 2021, Authentic, p.200)
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My Mom taught me a lot of things about teaching. She often said that a teacher should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Mary Jo also told me that as a teacher I should get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Since my Mom was the greatest teacher I know, I actually listened. So before we afflict the comfortable, let’s explore why comfort limits what we know and makes us more susceptible to problems in a rapidly changing future.
My students told me that saying, “comfort kills” or “afflict the comfortable” might be considered clickbait, but that they seemed like solid policies. Millions of students do not have access to comfort. These students are too busy negotiating fight or flight situations. For these students, schools should actively find ways to provide comfort so those students can learn. However, lately the comfort/discomfort conversation has not centered around students on the margins or borderlands of school communities. The politics of schooling has flipped the script in some parts of the country as a reactionary response to the perceived victimization of those who fear diversification of the social, economic, and political landscape.
People do strange things and fight hard to remain in their comfort zones. Parents do even stranger things to ensure that their students remain comfortable. Many popular parenting styles (helicopter, drone strike, snowplow) all strive to maintain comfort. Too often these days comfort has become the end all be all of life in school and out of schools. In some parts of the country, causing someone intellectual or cognitive discomfort lands you in jail. Politicians and parents in various communities have worked quite hard to ensure that their children retain exclusive rights to the privilege of comfort. Archconservatives in Florida, Texas, and other states designed, misappropriated. and promoted outdated orthodoxy in order to keep the comfortable comfortable. One could easily argue that the efforts by Christian conservatives and White Nationalists in (primarily) southern state governments have far reaching and immensely harmful effects on the members of the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. However, one could also argue that these efforts also damage the very youth that these politicians and mobs of parents claim they want to protect. Disenfranchised or marginalized students - those outside the mainstream or dominant narrative - have had to get used to these exclusionary and prejudiced practices. Unfortunately they have experience in dealing with and negotiating racism, homophobia, and anti-trans rhetoric. The students within the mainstream usually have no clue. They have become so used to the comforts such social and political protections provide that they struggle constantly when mommy, daddy, or Uncle Ron can’t help them and life forces them out of their comfort zones. Those students need help. Yes way too much attention and too many resources go to the comfortable, but let’s take a moment to dismantle this idea of comfort.
All students can benefit from exploring and expanding the edges of their comfort zone. Students, parents, and teachers have all become reluctant to embrace discomfort. Many of us have all become too used to our comfort zones. We have grown lazy from not venturing out or only speaking with those we agree with on issues. Teachers, students, parents, and politicians are all guilty of this failure to act. Accommodating parenting or teaching styles and efforts to preserve, protect and provide a better childhood for the well off has actually backfired.
If comfort kills, then discomfort saves. Discomfort does not mean pain, suffering or even pressure to perform. All learning involves causing some level of discomfort, so buckle up. Discomfort is a good thing.
Comfort gives both privilege and problems. Physical, social, emotional, and cognitive comfort represents moments in which a person does not have to worry. To be comfortable is to exist above or free of worry. Linger too long, not doing anything and getting going again feels impossible. The double edge sword of comfort provides rest and recovery, but also stagnation and a loss of physical or intellectual dexterity. Coaches and meatheads used to say, “No pain, no gain.” Frighteningly, they had it mostly right. To get in better physical shape you need to sweat and you’ll be sore afterwards. However, there’s a big difference between pain and discomfort. If you don’t ever sweat in the gym, you won’t ever make much progress. If you limit learning to only rainbows and sparkles, happy happy, joy joy activities, students won’t learn much.
When people say that learning should be happy and joyous - I usually throw up in my mouth. After I choke down my initial reaction, I ask some clarifying questions. Don’t get me wrong, I dig it when someone feels giddy or triumphant at the outcome of an activity or learning experience. But the process of learning may not go smoothly or may present significant challenges. In order to learn, you must embrace some discomfort.
Learning requires us to move outside our known world and process new information. This requires some time outside one’s comfort zone, which is not alway happy or joyous. We don’t always know what to do with or how we feel about new information. Academic or intellectual comfort is the antithesis of learning.
Comfort sits at the center of the American Dream. Even as that dream fades into mythology, comfort remains the goal for many Americans. Social comfort… economic comfort… emotional comfort… intellectual comfort - if you subscribe to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs this makes total sense. However, if we never get off the proverbial couch our curiosity stagnates and we become reluctant to explore new ideas or challenge ourselves.
Classrooms can do more to help students explore the boundaries of their comfort zones, to learn, and to realize their full potential. When individuals explore the boundaries of their comfort zone, their behavior resembles how people behave when they decide to swim in the ocean. You’ve got those that get their feet wet and then spend time splashing bits of water on themselves before moving a bit further out so their ankles get wet. Others go and stand knee deep and contemplate the water. With these first two groups, they may go in further but often return to the safety of their chair or towel. Still others walk slowly into the surf taking everything in, hopping over breakers for a bit before sinking under a wave. Finally you have the few folks who sprint out into the surf and dive under the biggest wave they can find. If you asked a classroom teacher they could probably group their students by similar classroom behavior.
Discomfort and comfort are necessary components of growth. I love sitting doing nothing every once in a while. I can’t stay like that since things always have to get done. You don’t get stronger when you exercise. The gains come after you workout and let your body rest. Exercise pushes your muscles, etc. but rest allows your body to incorporate that work as growth and create a new normal. In order for your body to learn how to be more capable, you have to balance discomfort and comfort, effort and recovery.
Different sciences tell us that systemic learning requires balance. Homeostasis or equilibrium represent bodies or ecosystems in balance. When something new comes and disrupts a food web, it pushes things out of whack. This disequilibrium causes some panic in the system but adjustments happen and equilibrium returns. However, if a system gets pushed too far from it comfort zone, it struggles to recover. If a system never experiences change, it struggles when it eventually does confront problematic incursions.
Balance is the key to managing discomfort. If you push too hard exercising bad things happen - pulled muscles, back goes out, etc. Injuries represent your body’s reminder that you pushed too hard and went too far out of balance. In response your body will need time to recover, find ways to heal or grow while it slowly returns to its preferred state of homeostasis. The brain works in similar ways. For our purposes, comfort represents a state of cognitive and emotional balance. New or different information comes in that stretches or pushes our system out of balance. We make sense of that information as we sit with for a period of time in which we construct knowledge and expand what we know.
Balance allows us to keep one foot in our comfort zone while we edge out into unchartered territory or wrestle with new ideas. In a previous lifetime I studied the impact of various types of risks on learning and students’ behavior. To help students negotiate risk (another key component of learning) adults needed to provide moderate risks. This Goldilocks sweet spot provided not much risk; not too little; but just the right amount of risk so that students could extend their comfort zones and achieve more. Discomfort in moderation within a supportive environment helps us all grow, learn or understand more, and live a more enriching life.
We have to remember that our students, your children, almost all youth can handle WAY more than we think they can and can demonstrate resilience beyond what we imagine. Usually, and I think it is the case in this situation, the adults are the problem. If students don’t learn to negotiate discomfort they will struggle with the increasing complexity of life as they get older. Realistically however, school years have already become more difficult for youth than they were back in the day. Instead of supporting their students, parents and teachers more often than not help youth avoid uncomfortable topics or issues. Given the tools to succeed, students can do amazing things and handle whatever comes their way in this ever changing world..
I learned not to argue with Mary Jo. In order to learn and grow we all have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Teachers do, from time to time, need to upend the couch on those who are hogging it in order to let others rest. Challenge yourself to embrace discomfort in different ways each day. As for the states of Magastan that have banned uncomfortable conversations, I can only wonder why these conversations frighten them so much.