Vygotsky and Problems of Special Education
GITA L. VYGODSKAYA
&dquo;A disability in and of itself is not a tragedy. It is
only an occasion to provoke a tragedy.&dquo;
-L. S. Vygotsky
FRST,
~m- IRST, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK FROM THE BOTTOM OF
my heart the persons who thought of devoting two issues of
Remedial and Special Education, appearing at the turn of this
century, to the thoughts, writings, and activities of Lev S.
Vygotsky. In this way, you have shown that you are taking his
ideas with you into the next century, the new millennium.
Your efforts are an expression of genuine respect for the
memory of this scholar. I am happy to greet the readers of the
journal. I am pleased that Americans will be able not only to
become more familiar with the works of this scholar, but also
to discuss them and any questions that arise in connection
with them on the pages of the journal. I hope the readers will
find the issues interesting and useful.
Vygotsky is now considered a classic in world psychol-
ogy. However, his contribution to the discipline concerned
with problems of the study, upbringing, and education of
handicapped children is less well known. Yet this contribution
is significant, and it is difficult to overestimate all he did in
this field. He is rightfully considered one of the founders of
special psychology and special education in Russia. His work
was carried out in two directions-theoretical and practical-
but these were intertwined tightly, and at times it was difficult
to separate them. His activities enriched both the theory and
practice of the teaching of children with handicapping condi-
tions.
How did Vygotsky come to the field of special educa-
tion ? Why did he take an interest in its problems? To answer
these questions I must digress slightly into his biography.
330
In 1924 Vygotsky was invited to work at the Moscow
Institute of Psychology. He accepted, and moved to Mos-
cow. After a few months, he was appointed head of the
section for the education of children who were physically
disabled and of children with mental retardation. He threw
himself into the new job.
Vygotsky organized and conducted the First Congress
on Special Education in Russia, held November 26, 1924. A
collection of articles, &dquo;Problems in the Education of Children
Who Are Blind, Deaf-Mute and with Mental Retardation,&dquo;
was published before the congress convened. Vygotsky edited
the collection and wrote its introduction. He wrote about the
significance of the problem of teaching and raising children
with disabilities, and called on scholars, teachers, and society
as a whole to solve this problem responsively and creatively.
At the congress Vygotsky delivered an extensive, rivet-
ing paper. The paper contained new concepts and practical
approaches for resolving issues in special education. One of
the participants of the congress remembered it thus:
People didn’t leave the conference in 1924 in the
same way they had left previous ones. This time
they were completely changed, renewed. It was
because of Vygotsky’s paper, which many special
educators were then hearing for the first time. The
paper wasnothing less than a bolt from the blue,
completely unexpected, and sharply altered the
course of special education.
What was new and
surprising for the listeners in Vygot-
sky’s paper? Why werethey so struck by it? At that time, the
prevailing and widespread approach to a child with a disabil-
ity was through biology. Vygotsky, however, advanced a new
theory to explain the nature of the development of children
with disabilities. In his view (1995),
Every disability, whether it be blindness, deafness,
or mental retardation, not only destroys the child’s
ability to respond to the physical world, but also
influences his relationships with people. A disabil-
ity is a kind of &dquo;social dislocation&dquo; brought about
by a relationship of the child to his environment.
And although the disability itself (blindness, deaf-
ness) is a biological fact, the educator is con-
fronted not so much by biological facts as by their
social consequences. Therefore, the education of
such a child comes down to straightening out these
social dislocations. The goal of the teacher is to
help the child live in this world, and to create
compensations for his or her physical short-
coming... so that the disruption of social rela-
tionships is repaired in another way. (p. 43)
Vygotsky (1995) also said,
One must keep in mind that any child with a dis-
ability is first of all a child and only afterwards an
impaired child.... One must not perceive in the
child with a disability only the defect, the &dquo;grams&dquo;
of the illness and not notice the &dquo;kilograms&dquo; of
health which children possess. From the psycho-
logical and pedagogical points of view, one must
treat the child with a disability in the same way as
a normal one. (p. 44) .
Vygotsky analyzed the system of teaching that had been
established in schools for students with disabilities. His
analysis contained not only a fully justified criticism of the
many methods of teaching and raising children with disabili-
ties, but also proposals for reexamining and recasting the
then-current system. He saw that the main path of develop-
ment of such children lay in social education. He wrote (1995),
The miracle of social education consists of the fact
that it teaches cripples how to work, encourages
the dumb to speak, and compels the blind to read.
This miracle, however, must be seen as the com-
pletely natural process of learning how to compen-
sate for a disability. (p. 72)
He called for the rejection of an approach that treated
these children as charity cases. He substantiated the possibil-
ity and necessity of integrating them into normal life.
And so he had to create a new special education, create
a theory and radically improve the whole system of education
of children whose development had been impaired. He initi-
ated the first research in this field and supervised publication
and widespread distribution of relevant literature, including
his first popular brochures: &dquo;Take Care of Your Children’s
Hearing,&dquo; &dquo;How One Must Treat Deaf-Mutes and Deaf Chil-
dren,&dquo; and &dquo;Mental Retardation and How to Deal with It.&dquo;
Such educational work was essential at that time so that the
teacher in whose class was sitting a child with a disability,
the doctor to whom such a child was brought, and the parents,
would know how to help him or her.
The situation that existed in the schools for disabled stu-
dents was further complicated by a shortage of specialists.
Often those working in this field did not understand the prob-
lems schools faced and were unable to resolve them. At the
same time, students were reluctant to apply to the department
that trained special education teachers. Yet such teachers were
needed urgently. Vygotsky also took an active part in prepar-
ing them. He began teaching on special education faculties in
colleges and universities.
In the summer of 1925 Vygotsky was sent as a delegate
from Russia to England to participate in the work of an inter-
national congress on teaching and raising deaf-mute children.
He also visited France, Germany, and Holland to study prob-
lems of educating handicapped children in these countries and
to visit psychology laboratories and pedagogical institutes. In
July 1925 in London, he read his extensive paper &dquo;Principles
of Social Education of Deaf-Mute Children in Russia,&dquo; which
was met with great interest.
In 1926 he created a laboratory for the study of children
with disabilities. It operated successfully for 3 years, carrying
out much practical work and producing significant research
material. In 1929, on the basis of this laboratory, Vygotsky
helped create the &dquo;Experimental Institute for Special Educa-
tion.&dquo; He was its lifelong advisor and consultant, and it was
here that he began studying children from a unified clinical,
psychological, and pedagogical perspective. (I would like to
give this aspect of his activities special notice because other-
wise your understanding of what he accomplished may not be
complete. Furthermore, he attached great importance to this
work and considered it essential.)
The clinical analyses and examination of children took
place at special conferences at his institute. They attracted a
wide audience from the most diverse disciplines. Not only did
the entire staff of the institute attend, but so did teachers from
all of Moscow, doctors, psychologists, and students. I know
about these conferences not from books or notes but from the
actual participants. Vygotsky’s colleagues and students
remembered them vividly, as did teachers from several auxil-
iary schools who were present.
The teachers said that the analyses were for them truly
an event. They remembered how at the end of the school day
they would rush from various corners of Moscow to be at the
institute. Because the hall couldn’t hold everyone who came
(the institute was spread out in separate small buildings), in
warm weather they would open the windows and those who
wished to hear stood for hours, listening to what was going on
inside. The many people present had to stand pressed to the
windows and to each other without moving, so as not to dis-
turb those standing close by. And so, after a full day’s work,
the teachers of Moscow stood listening to Vygotsky, who ana-
331
lyzed in detail each separate case, revealed the nature of the
disability, isolated the child’s difficulties or deviations in
development, outlined a plan of work with him, and pointed
out those healthy or positive aspects of the child’s makeup
that it was necessary to draw upon in this work. No one, of
course, required the teachers to attend these conferences. As
they told me, it was essential for them personally. Most
important, it was interesting and meaningful.
According to his students, Vygotsky presented the study
of children with disabilities in a new way. During the clinical
examination of a child, he always got to the essence of each
case, subjecting it to meticulous, deep analysis. First, there
was a comprehensive study of the child. Each child was
examined in detail by various specialists-doctors, psycholo-
gists, and teachers. The resulting data were presented to
Vygotsky at a conference, who took notes. Then he began his
own examination, talking with the child, proposing various
tasks, and asking questions. Vygotsky had a remarkable abil-
ity to establish contact with a child. The child would open up
to him more fully than to those who had examined him
before. It was easy to make contact despite the large number
of people in the audience. While working with the child,
Vygotsky paid attention not only to the result of carrying out
a given task, but he thoroughly analyzed the way the child
resolved it, how he behaved, and what he said in the process.
When the child left, Vygotsky spoke with the child’s parents
and then with the teachers in the child’s school. Only after he
had considered all the data, Vygotsky generalized the material
and drew conclusions. He not only refined his preliminary
diagnosis but also interpreted each case studied from a theo-
retical standpoint.
As a starting point of his analysis, he took existing
notions of the given disability, relying on data in world scien-
tific literature. He compared these data with the results of his
examinations, added his own thoughts, expressing at times
new ideas, and included all the material of the examination in
a fresh theoretical context. Behind each specific case he per-
ceived a problem of theory, and each time he was able to
uncover secrets others had missed.
These clinical analyses of children not only had practical
value, but enriched theories on special education. One of
Vygotsky’s students discovered some notes she had taken on
a certain episode at one such conference, where the student
being examined was doing poorly in public school. No one-
neither his teachers nor his parents-could understand why. It
was unclear even to the psychologists who examined him.
Vygotsky asked the boy what he liked to read. The boy named
a couple of simple children’s books. Vygotsky asked him to
tell briefly what they were about, and listened attentively
to the reply. He asked the child what he liked the best, what
was most interesting, and what he understood and did not
understand. Then he asked which book he had read most
recently that he liked especially and remembered. The boy
answered, Robinson Crusoe, and when asked whether he
understood everything in it, replied &dquo;yes.&dquo; At this point Vygot-
sky said to him, &dquo;That’s great! Tell me, then, what is an unin-
332
habited island?&dquo; The boy smiled and answered, &dquo;That’s the
only thing I didn’t understand.&dquo; When analyzing this case,
Vygotsky said, &dquo;It’s remarkable how he arrived at his own
diagnosis-he didn’t understand the most important thing. He
’only’ didn’t understand what uninhabited means.&dquo;
It is impossible within the limits of one brief article to
include all that Vygotsky did for the development and forma-
tion of scientific special education. I wanted to recount, basi-
cally, the beginning of his activities in this field.
It is left for me only to enumerate the primary problems
which he worked to solve: the necessity of isolating and tak-
ing into account the primary disability, and the secondary, ter-
tiary, and subsequent strata over it; the problem of social
compensation; the issue of alternate paths of development; the
substantiation of the necessity of early, properly structured
teaching and rearing; and the elaboration of questions and
methods connected with an early diagnosis of the disability.
The institute, which was created with Vygotsky’s active
participation, exists to this day, but under another name. This
year it celebrated its 70th anniversary, and in all this time its
work has been based on Vygotsky’s theoretical foundation.
The proposals advanced by Vygotsky became the prescription
for many decades, both for research on children with disabil-
ities and for reorganizing applied special education.
I think that the longevity of Vygotsky’s writings on spe-
cial education result from the fact that they successfully com-
bine theory and practice. He &dquo;made&dquo; science with his hands.
Vygotsky’s theory was fruitful because it arose from the
demands of practice, and the practice was successful because
it was grounded in deeply considered theory.
Many famous scholars in Russia and the West think that
Vygotsky’s ideas and writings defined his times. Vygotsky’s
writings are important not only for the history of science;
more remains to be learned from his works. He advanced
many interesting ideas that have not yet been implemented
and that are left to be digested, elaborated, and developed. I
sincerely hope that the readers will be able to use his legacy
for advancing special education.
Teaching and raising a child with a disability is very
complex, and I suspect it will remain so into the near future.
The many who dedicate themselves to this difficult task may
need advice and support. They should turn to Vygotsky, and
through his reflections, through the results of his work, he
will help. He will come without fail to the aid of teachers,
psychologists, parents, and all who are in need of this help. o
GITA L. VYGODSKAYA, the daughter of Lev S. Vygotsky, received her
doctorate in psychology from Moscow University in 1959. She worked all
her professional life in special education with deaf students. Currently, she is
retired and lives in Moscow. She writes extensively on the history of psy-
chology and the scientific legacy of her father. Address: Gita L. Vygodskaya,
c/o Dr. Boris Gindis, 13 South Van Dyke Avenue, Suffern, NY 10901.
REFERENCE
Vygotsky,L. S. (1995). Problemy defectologii [Problems of defectology].
Moscow: Prosvecshenie Press.