[Xmca-l] Re: Crises and stages/ages

Fri Mar 20 05:22:45 PDT 2015

Sticking to child development for the moment .... a child is born 
physically, biologically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually 
and socially dependent on their family (or whomever).
In something like 90% of cases, by the time they're in their 20s, they 
are working, voting, householders in their own right. No matter how many 
people never get a job, raise a family or learn to tell the difference 
between  a used car salesman and a statesman, this process is normal, 
the passage through a series of culturally defined social positions in 
which the given individual more or less adequately fulfils the social 
expectations.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Huw Lloyd wrote:
> So new social positions are an inadequate index of development due to the
> prevalence of 'pathological development'.
>
> I agree that 'it is always situational'.  The complexity in this is that
> reflexivity is part of that situation.  E.g. in which particular
> situational episode does a child 'gain' 'object permanence'?  And in which
> particular situation does a child discover that a game can be made out of
> fixed rules, rather than arbitrarily imagined ones that are subject to
> change?
>
> Huw
>
> On 20 March 2015 at 02:46, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> Ha, ha! Huw, I had never heard of "the Peer Principle" before, but now
>> I've read up on it, it very accurately describes what I have witnessed in a
>> life time in universities! :)
>> But the promotion of people to "their level of incompetence" (something
>> Australia as a nation is going through at the moment!) is a *pathology* of
>> development. The converse pathology is a child who is continued to be
>> treated as a child long after they have outgrown childhood, or staff who
>> massively over-perform their role, but due to extraneous reasons, never get
>> promoted or leave in search of a better position.
>> While the idea of development vs learning does connote ideas of
>> qualitative and quantitative change, I do not believe these abstractions
>> provide a rational understanding of human development.
>> The main thing is that it is always situational.
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>
>>
>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> That 'change in social situation' interpretation does crop up quite
>>> frequently.  But for me it is inadequate and misleading.  Particularly
>>> with
>>> phenomena described by the Peter principle.
>>>
>>> For me, development as a distinction from the broader notion of learning
>>> is
>>> simply the accommodation of genuine generalisations affording greater
>>> reflexivity.  This will, by virtue of the qualitative change, result in a
>>> different social situation.
>>>
>>> Rote and mere factual learning can theoretically actually lead to less
>>> capacity for adaptation, so Simon may have a particular idea in mind.
>>>
>>> Incidentally, I tend to pair that text of Simon's with Vicker's 'Art of
>>> Judgement'.  Some good, more indirect, thinking there too.
>>>
>>> Huw
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 20 March 2015 at 01:47, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> The distinction I use, Mike, is that in development, not only does a
>>>> person's activity change, but also that of those in their social
>>>> surroundings so that the person occupies a new social position or role.
>>>> Learning is change, without change in your social position. In "Problem
>>>> of
>>>> Age" Vygotsky formulates this in terms of change from being an "infant"
>>>> to
>>>> "early childhood" or from "early childhood" to being a "pre-school
>>>> child,"
>>>> etc. Development is a social relation, involving both characteristics of
>>>> the person and of their environment.
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> mike cole wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> After sending the note below I encountered the following definition of
>>>>> learning in Simon's
>>>>> *Sciences of the artificial* which I am reading with respect to other
>>>>> (related) matters.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less
>>>>> permanent
>>>>> change in its capacity for adapting to the environment.*
>>>>>
>>>>> The word, development, does not appear in this book.
>>>>>
>>>>> Seems relevant to many long standing discussions of learning and
>>>>> development in this discourse space.
>>>>>
>>>>> mike
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 5:14 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>>>> David ---
>>>>>> Picking on just one thread from your multiplex comments in the context
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> the discussion on printing presses and digital computer
>>>>>> technologies, i would like to thank you for juxtaposing these two
>>>>>> paragraphs, one from LSV on crises in development, the other
>>>>>> from Leontiev. I have made a separate header because I am not agile or
>>>>>> learned enough to keep track of both at the same time,
>>>>>> the ontogenetic level of analysis is plenty enough for me to try to
>>>>>> think
>>>>>> systematically about in a single message..
>>>>>>
>>>>>> \Vygotsky, (could you give pages in current English version so we enter
>>>>>> the relevant portion of the text?):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> These ages (i.e. stable ages--DK) and this type of child development
>>>>>> have
>>>>>> been studied more completely than ages characterized by a different
>>>>>> course
>>>>>> of child development (i.e.the crisis--DK). These latter were discovered
>>>>>> by
>>>>>> empirical paths, one by one, in a haphazard manner, and many have still
>>>>>> not
>>>>>> been shown by the majority of investigators in systems and are not
>>>>>> included
>>>>>> in the general periodization of child development. Many authors have
>>>>>> even
>>>>>> doubted the evidence of the inner necessity of their existence. Many
>>>>>> are
>>>>>> inclined to take them more as “maladies” of development, as deviations
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> the process fromthe normal path, than as internally necessary periods
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> child development. Almost none of the bourgeois investigators have
>>>>>> realized
>>>>>> their theoretical signfiicance, and the attempt in our book at their
>>>>>> systematization, at their theoretical interpretation, and at their
>>>>>> inclusion in the general scheme of child development for this reason
>>>>>> should
>>>>>> be seen as perhaps the first attempt of this kind."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Compare:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>   “These crises—the three year old crisis, the seven year old crisis,
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> adolescent crisis, the youth crisis—are always associated with a change
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> stage. They indicate in clear, obvious form that these changes, these
>>>>>> transitions from one stage to another have an inner necessity of their
>>>>>> own. The existence of development of crises has long been known and
>>>>>> their
>>>>>> ‘classic’ interpretation is that they are caused by the child’s
>>>>>> maturing
>>>>>> inner characteristics and the contradictions that arise on that soil
>>>>>> between it andthe environment. From the standpoint of that
>>>>>> interpretation
>>>>>> the crises are, of course, inevitable, because these contradictions are
>>>>>> inevitable in any conditions. There is nothing more false, however, in
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> theory of the development of the child’s psyche than this idea. In
>>>>>> fact,
>>>>>> crises are not at all inevitable accomplishments of psychic
>>>>>> development.
>>>>>> It
>>>>>> is not the crises which are inevitable, but the turning points or
>>>>>> breaks,
>>>>>> the qualitative shifts in development. The crisis, on the contrary, is
>>>>>> evidence that a turning point or shift has not been made in time. There
>>>>>> need by no crises at all if the child’s psychic development does not
>>>>>> take
>>>>>> shape spontaneously but in a rationally controlled process, controlled
>>>>>> upbringing.”  (pp. 398-399)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Leontiev, A.N. (1981). Problems of the Development of the Mind.
>>>>>> Progress:
>>>>>> Moscow
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I take the red text to be the crux of the argument, and the kind of
>>>>>> difference we see in the two men's articles
>>>>>> about the "problem of the environment."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In American developmental psychology the issue of continuities and
>>>>>> discontinuities in ontogenetic development
>>>>>> continues today the discussion taking place in the 1920's and 1930's.
>>>>>> But
>>>>>> I have never seen anyone argue that (say) the syndrome
>>>>>> of behaviors identified as "the terrible twos" occurs because a turning
>>>>>> point has not happened in time, nor that ontogeny is rendered
>>>>>> continuous
>>>>>> by
>>>>>> rational control of parents/society. That, it seems, is the red thread
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> Stalinism that is so offputting in ANL.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do not love LSV's characterization of non-Soviet psychologists
>>>>>> treating
>>>>>> such periods "as deviations of the process from the normal path." I am
>>>>>> not sure who he is referring to, and perhaps he is right and I just
>>>>>> need
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> dig deeper into the history of European and American developmental
>>>>>> psychology. Piaget and Erikson,  two Europeans whose work was
>>>>>> influential
>>>>>> from the 1950/60's don't, at least on the surface, fit this discussion.
>>>>>> Maybe they do below the surface, or there are other, allied issue to
>>>>>> raised.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Several years ago we (you and I and Andy and others) sought to
>>>>>> characterize LSV's developmental theory but could not reach agreement.
>>>>>> Perhaps it is worth another try.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
>>>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>             
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>>         
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>     
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