RE: Blasphemy

Konopak (jkonopak who-is-at ou.edu)
Tue, 04 Aug 1998 13:24:35 -0500

At 04:13 PM 8/3/98 -0500, nate wrote:
>My interpretation of the quote was Vygotsky was trying to make the exact
>argument you are making. The quote was taken from a chapter on morality and
>ethical behavior in which Vygotsky was critiquing the bad boy/girl
>stereotype. What the quote means to me is as parents / teachers it is
>important to realize that those children we may judge as bad or hyper or
>unable to learn are going to be our Einstein's.

Is that why it is politically so easy and comfortable and expectable to
villify and demonize youth?
Especially in marginalized communities? Because they express their genius
in ways that rebut/rebuff
the presumptions of legitimacy of dominant/"majority" authorized
behaviors/practices? Is that why sports, for example, has become defacto
the provinces of marginalized?

A TERRIFIC article in this week's The Nation--a leftish US weekly--by
Gerald Early takes up some cultural (i.e., racial) implications of the
relation of certain aspects and attributes of mind to sport _qua_activity,
and of what it may be that sport is (either?/both?) a sign and a tool. You
can read it at http://www.TheNation.com--for some reason I can't get it to
hotlink and save you the step.

I'd be interested in the reaction of others in the group to

>Vygotsky was critiquing the
>attitude of looking at those children as having moral problems. He
>argued instead that these were the children who were gifted and would be our
>future leaders.

Is there any relation between that and the ways in which certain elements
of contemporary commercial culture persist in attributing--while at least
tacitly approving--moral decrepitude to athletes, and the ways they (jocks)
are held to much different standards than merer mortals? The role-model
syndrome? The responsibility of the public performance? Early's article
stimulates my curiousity on this.

cheers

konopak

"A solipsist is never alone."