Re: Vygotsky & the meaning of giftedness

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Sat, 15 Aug 1998 13:28:24 +0200

Thanks for the answer, Olga

I liked very much to get your outline of myths and definitions of
giftedness in your part of the world. It is a complex picture isn't it, at
a point in history where we have visible both the grand romantic myth of
the (revolutionary) genius and the modern, rationalist concept of
giftedness -- which our American participants have given some critical
insiders' views of an extreme and decontextualized version of. When I write
it as abstractly as this, it seems as if any regional culture which has
inherited patterns of reasoning from old Greece plays out some variation of
this theme of contrasts (with their flipsides of what constitutes the polar
opposite, quite different in the romantic and the rationalist case).

It strikes me that there may be a tendency to be romantic when looking
backwards (writing the biographies of the Great) and rationalist when
looking forwards (planning the education of the young)... Well, too simple,
too simple (writes Eva, slapping her own fingers for producing
dichotomies).

I liked the Ukraine definition, Olga:

At 14.16 +0400 98-08-14, Olga Marchenko wrote:
>I am Ukraine, in my culture gifteness is connected with
>ability of person to create the new relationships with others to find out
>something new in the world.

And, I'm thinking: it so easily happens in this medium that once a question
has been answered by one voice, the matter is closed. As usual I'm more
curious than that -- thinking that the international character of this list
CAN be such a great resource for exchanging multiple views on the same
thing. Or is this topic exhausted?

Eva