Re: Quasi-historical discourse

From: Helena Worthen (hworthen@igc.org)
Date: Mon Feb 11 2002 - 07:20:05 PST


So.....

We have Vygotsky, according to Paul Dillon, ..." trying to create the
psychological component of a unified dialectical materialist social theory"
... and Joseph Glick saying Piaget was attempting ...."to link changing
structures to the biologically invariant functions - "adaptation" (ultimately
made of assimilation and acccomodation in balance) and Organization (which
organizes these adaptations with respect to
one another)"..

Neither of these goals has been accomplished yet, out there in the real world
where people are or are not funding education, welfare programs, training, etc.

And here on xmca we are talking about support for minority grad students. I
myself am working in a program that tries to teach minority/community people
enough math to pass building trades apprenticeship tests and get into union
construction apprenticeships.

So, don't these two goals still need to be worked on? Maybe the context in
which they can be applied has changed, but certainly, to have a social theory
that was grounded in material reality (I'm being a little Procrustean here) and
that had a psychological component and was broadly understood by people who
make decisions about, for example, access to community colleges, or funding for
training for laid-off workers, would be great! And to really understand -- and
to have people out there in the day care/Head Start/ state legislature universe
really get why it's important for kids who are trying to grow to have a decent
breakfast -- we're nowhere near being able to get this news out there in a
clear, simple way that the people who make decisions can use.

So I'd say that the problems V and P were working on are still alive and acute
today, and that the problems people on xmca are working on can be loosened up a
bit by referring back to them and clarifying their application.

Helena Worthen

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Glick, Joseph <JGlick@gc.cuny.edu>
> To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2002 4:40 PM
> Subject: Quasi-historical discourse
>
> >
> > If we want to find out what these guys were really about we should look
> > to the kinds of theoretical problems that they were trying to solve -
> > which were quite different and which are, I think, quite different from
> > the kinds of problems that we are trying to solve.>



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