[Xmca-l] Re: does this screed have an inkling of merit?

[David Kellogg]

We are living through a public health emergency here in South Korea. I
won't provide the details, which are (fortunately) even more widely
available than the virus itself and (unfortunately) far more available than
the F94 disposible masks we are supposed to be wearing whenever we go out.
Going out is strongly discouraged, and schools, gyms, and even local
government facilities remain closed.  But I think that public health
emergencies are actually a more useful "lens" (as people in our field like
to say these days) through which to read your article than the the author's
admittedly irrelevant trip to the beach.

First of all, a good public health emergency like this one, or the Broad
Street Pump cholera epidemic, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s, and
SARS/MERS in the early years of the present millenium) exposes in a very
graphic way how inescapable the cultural-historical organization
of human biological content is. Cities, churches, college campuses and
airline companies are simply the forms which human biology have taken, and
so they are inevitably the conduits through which viruses reorganize human
biology for their own apparently purposeless purposes. Unlike viruses,
markets, and imaginary libertarian/anarchist paradises populated by
atomistically inclined "free-thinking individuals" opposed in principle to
planned behaviors of any kind, these cultural-historical forms have the
great advantage of being potentially conscious, deliberate, and
purposeful--i.e. plannable.

Secondly, and as a direct result, a good public health emergency like this
one also evokes a cultural-historical immune response. Broad Street evoked
modern immunology. AIDS/HIV evoked ACT-UP, and this had the indirect result
of showiing how inextricably gay people are part of our cities, churches,
college campuses and even airline industry and thus helping bring out equal
marriage rights. SARS/MERS created the medical infrastructure that is
starting to bring the epidemic under control even in Daegu. This morning
the leader of the pro-dictatorship pro-American party had to be tested for
the virus, because he sat next to the virus-positive leader of a
corporatist teachers "union" in a rally; he tested negative, but not before
a session of the national assembly had to be cancelled, and then he
immediately called a halt to all rallies and asked people to cooperate with
the medical establishment instead of travelling all over the country
agitating for travel bans on Chinese people.

When I was recently in the USA, I noticed (partly under the influence of
having to buy short-term medical coverage for myself and my wife) that even
Americans are starting to take seriously the idea that health care should
not be completely marketized, that more than just  preventive medicine
might be usefully nationalized, collectivized, and even planned. The
"Common Core" and the National Curriculum which motivates the article you
sent around are both similarly American (i.e. similarly tentative and
timid) steps in the realization that education might usefully follow suit.
I also noticed, however, that very few Americans (including the most "left"
of the current candidates for president) would be willing to see
plannability extended to other necessities, such as housing,
transportation, and basic necessaries of life, let alone the underlying
factors of capital and labor. Education does many things, and inevitably
some of the things it does can be made to look manipulative and dangerous
by free-thinking and free-wheeling proponents of the free market like your
author and our own pro-dictatorship pro-American party. But education
remains the only cultural-historical immune response to the viral anarchy
of the labor market that young people really have.

David Kellogg

New co-translation, with Nikolai Veresov:

‘L. S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works: Volume 1. Foundations of Pedology’.

Free downloadable PDF with introductory essay, concluding essay.
Free summarizing outlines.

Book product page: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270

The eBook is available here:  https://link.springer.com/
book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-0528-7


On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 4:25 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
wrote:

> To me, it seems a product of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias,
> but I ask sincerely: does anybody find any inklings of merit in this 2014
> essay?
> http://invisibleserfscollar.com/unveiling-the-true-focus-of-the-common-core-obuchenie-within-students-to-gain-desired-future-behaviors/
>
> I stumbled upon the article while googling "obuchenie and perezhivanie,"
> two terms I'm in the early stages of understanding. The blog's proprietor
> writes with a lot of . . . energy. (And perhaps, a cocktail of hubris and
> pseudoconcepts - http://tiny.cc/dpbgkz )
>
> To briefly add, for whatever it's worth: I am probably more familiar with
> the (somewhat paranoid) style of argumentation in the attached essay than I
> am with the finer points of cultural-historical theory.  But I'm not a very
> refined consumer of either.
>
> The blogger writes in a style I'm not particularly fond of -- i.e.,
> wielding a sword and swinging it around wildly.  Amidst the wild swinging,
> I ask: does any of it hit?
>
> I'd be interesting in any productive thoughts at all.
>
> Thanks ~
> Anthony
>
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