i just finished reading Virginia's paper and found it informative on many
levels.
but i wanted to comment on a couple of ideas that emerged for me.
first, my son was labeled ADHD in third grade (he's now 17 and no longer
taking ritalin) and in several of your transcripts people mentioned third
grade. i also remember reading somewhere that the majority of kids
diagnosed ADD/ADHD were third grade boys. as a teacher who works with kids
in all the grades of an elementary school, my intuition says that the
primary grades (pre-K through 2) are assumed to be prepatory, to lay the
groundwork, so to speak, for the real work of school which begins in third
grade. that's when kids are expected to know how to sit quietly for longer
periods of time, to know how to "study." to begin taking lengthy
standardized tests, to do research, etc.
the other thing i wondered about might be connected in some way to Nate's
question about "human subjects." i understand the constraining aspects of
language on identity (i think) as Wertsch's quote about both opening and
narrowing doors of experience,
and i assume "language users" is what (or who) you were looking at in your
research,
but i continue to struggle with the limits of language as the only way to
define the self, or identity, or who we are and what we can do.
but then, again, i only seem to have the tool called language with which
to make a self or a world. . .
kathie
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.........Our words misunderstand us..............................
.....We are our words, and black and bruised and blue.
Under our skins, we're laughing....................................
.........................Adrienne Rich..................................
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff@ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html
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