Re: Play

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
24 Oct 1999 22:41:22 -0000

Nate, I'm delighted that someone else on this list has found something of
substance in Holzman & Newman. I am intrigued and irritated by "schools for
growth" -- intrigued by the 'gap' in CHAT that performance (/play) theory
'fills' & irritated by the claim that any one version of vygotsky is the
'true' version, superceding all others. I don't remember if the claim was
explicit & intended or if i construed it -- i _should_ check. But I am very
happy to know that someone else has picked up on what is intriguing there
because i'd like to see the text discussed. I can't be more specific until I
reread - very bad memory on short term engagements

judy

>In this sense, I see Holzman and Newman's work as taking how Vygotsky saw
>the ZPD operating in play to different levels. They transform rules and/for
>results into tool and /for results with play being the former. Play
>(performance, drama, writing etc.) is not in opposition to "reality" or
>work, but connected to it. As with children who play mommy and daddy it is
>very well connected to reality, but at the same time the child can be what
>she/he is not (a head taller than him/her self). In *Schools for Growth*,
>I see "play" being elaborated at a variety of levels. In using both
>Vygotskian ideas of play and Wiittgensteinian language games the importance
>of performance is invoked. From the social therapy centers, to the All
>Star Talent Show a variety "play" activities are described.
>
>In Vygotsky's article on play and in later work (*Child Psychology*) on
>imagination in late childhood, he makes a pretty direct connection between
>the two. So, play (in the preschool period) being not simply a transition
>from rules "and" to rules "for" results, but also having an important
>relationship to creativity, imagination, or "revolutionary activity" to use
>Newman and Holzman's term. As Vera describes in *Notebooks of the mind*
>the act of creativity is not in opposition to culture but a gift to it.
>
>For me, Vygotsky arguing for the ZPD in both play and education is of
>central importance. The connection is not simply that play has the same
>function for younger children that instruction has for older children, but
>a "unity of opposites". As Vera describes in *notebooks* that creativity
>was not solely embedded within this sole individual against the social, but
>that the social; teachers, parents, friends, books etc. facilitated or
>supported that creativity.
>
>While "little league" or other activities are play in an opposition sense
>(not work) are they in the "developmental" sense. Is what Vygotsky saw as
>characteristic of play in preschool better found in other avenues. I tend
>to see the 5th D as being more consistent with play in a "developmental"
>sense.
>
>
> /\ / /\ | /-----
> / \ / /__\ ---|--- /---
>/ \/ / \ | /----
>
>Nate Schmolze
>http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
>schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
>
>*******************************************************************
>"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
>since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
>it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
>in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
>interests".
>
> L.S. Vygotsky
>********************************************************************
>
>

Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183