[Xmca-l] Re: "Which one question . . .?"

[HENRY SHONERD]

I would add something to the discussion of the question is that much of the work done in determining the functions of the brain are based on studies of people with insults to the brain. This raises exactly the problem Vygotsky talks about in studying the development of the child whereby the child is seen as an imperfect adult. It’s not a stretch to see the obsession with standardized testing to determine learning as the same deficit approach. Or a checklist of features to characterize a category. Life is messy. Most of us won’t admit we’re lucky to be better off than someone else. Instead we defend our privilege with claptrap about free will. :)
Henry


> On Jan 22, 2021, at 1:38 PM, Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Helpful responses, thank you.
> 
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com <mailto:anthonymbarra@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Recently I was asked: "In a room of experts, which question would you most like to hear a range of responses to?" 
> 
> On the spot, I had no answer, but I do have one now:
> 
> This question: "What do you think all this means? (excerpted from Collected Works, Vol 4)
> ". . . the problem that confronts psychology is to detect the true uniqueness of child behavior in all the fullness and richness of its actual expression and to present a positive picture of the child personality. But a positive picture is possible only if we radically change our representation of child development and take into account that it is a complex dialectical process that is characterized by a complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging of the processes of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties and adapting" (Vygotsky 1997, Vol 4. pp. 98–99)
> It seems the question can only be answered in less than 2 minutes or more than 45 minutes. Is a middle range even possible?
> 
> If you have any thoughts, please share.
> 
> Thanks, and happy new year ~
> 
> Anthony Barra
> 
> 
> P.S. For context, here are two preceding paragraphs to the excerpt above:
> "Should we want to characterize in a single general statement the basic requisite that the problem of development raises for contemporary research, we could say that this requisite consists in studying the positive uniqueness of child behavior. This requires some explanation.  
> All psychological methods used thus far for studying the behavior of the normal and the abnormal child, regardless of the great variety and differences that exist between them, have one common characteristic that links them in a certain respect. This characteristic is the negative description of the child that results from existing methods. All the methods speak of what the child does not have, what the child lacks in comparison with the adult, and what the abnormal child lacks as compared to the normal child. We have before us always a negative picture of the child personality. Such a picture tells us nothing about the positive uniqueness that distinguishes the child from the adult and the abnormal child from the normal child." (p. 98)  

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