Re: Authenticity in education

nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Fri, 21 May 1999 16:32:28 -0500

While there is definately a difference in emphasis between Vygotskian
theory and Foucault, I do see them complementary. They were both as most
Foucaultians influenced by Marx and Marxist theory.

Foucault saw power as both positive and negative which seems to imply
internalization of power is not necessarily bad, but should be an area of
critical inspection. Vygotsky, also did not consistantly see
internalization as an essential good as in my sig about good boys and girls
which was mentioned in the context of those children who too easily
assimulate to "socialization".

Veresov argues in reference to Vygotsky's genetic law,

"Why Vygotsky used the word "stage" this is not a metaphor as many people
think. The task of Vygotsky in 1930-1931 was to create the psychology in
terms of drama. The stage is the place the dramatic development takes
place. The stage (theatre) has two planes - social plane (dimension) and
individual plane. The planes only make sense relative to the stage and they
are connected as two projections of the stage where the child is not a
spectator, but participant.

Category is the philosophical concept. How can one imagine that the
function exists as a category? Sounds strange, but according to
Stanislavsky (famous theatre director Vygotsky used to know) and Sergey
Eisenshtein (filmmaker and a friend of Vygotsky) "category" in the drama
means "collision", "event", dramatic unit, and the unit of analysis of
drama: it might be a dialogue (mostly) or emotional explosion and so on.
Vygotsky is speaking about development as a process of events, collisions
and their reflections in both planes."

Yaroshevsky makes very similar arguments as in Vygotsky felt development
should be analyzed on two planes; the plane of its transformation from an
external to internal psychological entity, and on the plane of the
interpretation of that transformation as having a history of its own with
various stages, zigzags, and dramatic effects (Yaroshevsky 1989).

The genetic law then may not be best looked at as the child goes from a to
z, but the dialectical process that occurs from a child participating in
activity that goes from a to z. And because of that process both the adult
and the child is transformed. In this way I see Foucault and Vygotsky
complementary because they were both concerned with dialectical, dynamic
processes that could not be understood in stage like thinking. For
Foucault it was power that was not neceisarily localized but a complicated
process coming from different sources. While Vygotsky maybe not always
consistant generally saw development in a similar way in which it was the
process itself that needed to be studied as in his assertion we don't want
to study processes that are already fossilized. Both their thinking is a
struggle, I think, for americans in particular, because of what Homi Bhabha
refers to as our tendency to turn verbs into nouns.

I tend to interpret Vygotsky as seeing a tension or contradiction in
motives as a positive thing as in his continual reference to teaching as
warlike in a positive manner. In this sense there is a danger in going to
either extreme - education as in a dictatorship relationship between
teacher and students, and one in which power becomes decentered which I
would add power goes underground. How I see this working out in practice
is the reference to appropriation in *Construction Zone* in which both the
teacher and students are transformed. Instruction must be all at once here
and not here. The following quote also points to what I see as an emphasis
of the dialectical process rather than an a to z mentality.

page 62

"Within the ZPD, objects do not have a unique analysis. An object such as
poem, a chart or a spoken concept may be understood very differently by a
child and teacher. Likewise, the same speech act may be interpreted quite
differently. But these differences need not cause trouble for the teacher
or child or the social interaction; the participants can act as if their
understandings are the same. At first, this systematic vagueness about
what an object really is may appear to make cognitive analysis impossible.
However; it now appears to us that this looseness is just what is needed to
allow change to happen when people with differing analysis interact. It is
also the key element for the process we call appropriation".

Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu

People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
People who possess strong feelings even people with great minds
and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls
L.S. Vygotsky

----- Original Message -----
From: Katherine Brown <kbrown who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 21, 1999 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: Authenticity in education

> I don't know if its a question of activities being authentic or not, they
> are just configurations. Its a question of motives. If the motive for
> the activity is not clear, shared, or breaking apart, then you have a
> situation of pseudo-objects or truncated goals where there should be some
> compelling force pulling people toward iteself.
> Maybe if school children are motivated to go to school to see their
friends
> and adults want kids to go to school to learn how to comply with
instructions
> and authority, you're always going to have mixed motives. I alwys
wondered
> about the part of FOucault where he said we become our own jailers when
we
> internalize authroity or believe we are being scrutinized, compared with
> the definition of development in Vygotskian theory about how the novice
> is seen taking over more responsibility for the management of a task or
> problem solving situation, regulating one's own behavior, orienting to
> thigs that had to be pointed out, increasing sense of what is expected of
> one (what the right answer is when talking to adults) vs. what you really
> thing or really do....It seems to me that school is a place where
children and
> adults are swimming in a sea of mixed motives, and that its hard to
imaging
> everyone being on the same page in some idyllic authentic activity....
> Half baked and maybe not going to rise...
> Katherine bRown
>