What does it mean to say that obuchenie refers to "both" teaching and
learning? Is it more inclusive, in the sense that fruit includes both apples
and oranges? Does it combine the two as elements as when dialogue combines
speaking and listening? Or is it something altogether different than either,
something beyond teaching and learning?
And why don't we have a word like that in English? Or do we?
djc
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 12:15 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: translation problems
A while back Jay asked about translation issues and there has been some
side conversation involving Eugene around the term, "obuchenie" which
is not consistently translated in *Mind in Society*. Back even before the
beginning of the world (1987! :-) ) I came across the following statement
concerning the term which helped me a lot. It is the source of our coming
to use the term teaching/learning in the Construction Zone and later
work.
I thought it might be of interest to more than Jay, Eugene, and myself. Here
it is.
mike
-----
"It should be noted, too, that the Russian word obuchenie does not admit to
a direct English translation. It means both teaching and learning, both
sides of the two-way process, and is therefore well suited to a dialectical
view of a phenomenon made up of mutually interpenetrating opposites.
Its frequent conventional translation simply as 'learning' therefore renders
much Russian work in English translation wholly meaningless, particularly
the intense Soviet interest in the relationship between obuchenie and
development.
It should be recalled that the verb 'to develop' is transitive as well as
intransitive, and that the dialectical viewpoint will therefore include a
different view of the concept of 'development'. Not only do children
develop, but we adults develop them. On balance, Soviet developmental
psychology is a psychology of teaching and teaching difficulties, as much as
ours is one of learning and learning difficulties." (pp. 169-170)
--Andrew Sutton, In J. Brine, M. Perrie, and Andrew Sutton, (Eds.), Home,
School and Leisure in the Soviet Union, University of Birmingham, 1980.
[Reprinted by Permission]
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