[Xmca-l] Re: English translation of Pedology of the Adolescent

[David Kellogg]

Yes, someone on this list once remarked that a pencil has in coded form the
history, the function, and even the structure of writing. So a pencil is
composed of wood and graphite in one historical period and steel and lead
in another; a pencil has the function of marking paper without marking the
fingers, and both functions are realized by the structural relationship of
the paper-marking element to the covering material.

But I think the key word here is "coded"--the first encoding is only
accessible to the historian, the second to the engineer, and the third is
accessible, but ulitmately accidental, in the child's own writing. But
learning the practice of writing is learning a form of knowing, of knowing
written speech: it's not a form of decoding the history, structure and
function of pencils. In East Asia we went from bamboo brushes to cell
phones with only a generation or two at the pencil stage. In learning how
literacy is taught, it's probably more useful to listen to what teachers
say than it is to look at what they give the children; it is here that
the essential knowledge is laid out in its uncoded form.

My wife's experience of pencils at school was very different from that of
her brother: he was the eldest son and got new pencils, while the first
time my wife ever used a pencil longer than a stub of a few centimeters she
was already in college. Her attitude towards new pencils is still almost
reverent as a result, but I don't think it has had much effect on the way
she writes. The post-it notes she has left me on this computer seem quite
irreverent (particularly with regard to my memory capacity).

dk

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Book with the Seoul Vygotsky Community

Volume 1 of "Pedology of the Adolescent", 분열과 사랑 (in the Korean language)

http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=148240197


On Sat, Jun 2, 2018 at 5:03 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:

> Item c in David's enumeration makes an appearance in volume 4, p. 60-63.
> The hankering after "mental tools", in my opinion, is a major
> misapprehension by students of Vygotsky. It confuses development of the
> epistemological basis of knowing and activity with the notion of being
> given a tool! This, in turn, decouples (or ignores) the necessity for
> practices to embody epistemological forms of knowing from cultural
> participation. Culture then becomes some arbitrary set of practices that
> one is indoctrinated into, completely ignoring the necessity for the
> development in ways of knowing. Maybe the full pedology volume will help to
> rectify this.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
> On 1 June 2018 at 01:21, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
>
>> I’m holding my breath...!  :)
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On May 30, 2018, at 11:04 PM, Larry Smolucha <lsmolucha@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Message from Francine:
>>
>> David thank you for the exposition on how  the *Pedology of the
>> Adolescent* has come down to us over the years. It should be available
>> in English for its centennial (2031).
>>
>>
>> ---George Eliot
>>
>>
>>
>
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