On Friday I had the opportunity to listen to Tina Grotzer, a professor at the ed school and a part of Project Zero, talk about her work on understanding causality. Dr. Grotzer's work has focused on understanding complex relationships in science and the natural world.
Dr. Grotzer is working to help teachers and students shift their understanding of causality from directional causality to relational causality. Directional causality is the predominant and powerful way of thinking that pushes us to point the finger at a single actor in an event and assign blame. This is the kind of thinking that starts with spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes in an attempt to stop the spread of malaria, and ends with parachuting live cats.
Relational causality forces us to think about the way that individuals and systems interact. It also asks us to go beyond event-based thinking and think more broadly. I started thinking about how directional causality has held us back in discussions of school reform - bad teachers are to blame, bad parents are to blame, etc - but a more potent example came to mind when I thought about the death of Trayvon Martin.
The tragic death of Trayvon Martin has weighed heavily on me since reading about it two weeks ago. I can only imagine the hurt his family is dealing with, but also the pain, anger and anxiety caused to every person with reason to believe, "That could have been me (or my brother, son, cousin, nephew...)". Recently I've been thinking one of my own students from my first year of teaching who is nearing Trayvon's age.
There is reason to feel inspired by the outpouring of support and the widespread action taken in response to Trayvon's death. If you spend enough time on Drudge Report (I don't recommend it) you'll also find many reasons to be disgusted and saddened.
For my own part, thinking about Dr. Grotzer's talk on Friday, I wonder if we'll have a chance to talk about what Trayvon's death really means for us as Americans. The current conversation seems a perfect example of our society's tendency towards directional causality.
We want to blame George Zimmerman. Or gun manufacturers. Or the hoody.
But are we asking how these factors, and so many others intersected to resulted in the unnecessary death of a 17 year-old boy? Will we take the time to hold a mirror up to our country and ask ourselves the tough questions about race? The fact is George Zimmerman's actions reflect a much broader problem in America, but it seems unlikely we'll talk about it as long as we're trying to assign blame to just one person or thing.
