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Re: [xmca] The Fundamentals of Defectology



It is a very interesting read irrespective of any interest in practical work with people with disabilities. In the several hundred pages, there are a number of reformulations of well-known and much discussed (on this list) ideas of Vygotsky's which shed new light on them. I also picked up from the Luria article that Natalia mentioned that in this work Vygotsky used a new "unit of analysis," though Luria does not spell it out ... and nor does Vygotsky. But I gather that what is being referred to is defect/compensation, an idea appropriated from Alfred Adler. And Vygotsky points out that disabled kids are subject to the same laws and processes of development as normal kids, and that in fact being a child is itself a form of disability, and it is only through the struggle to overcome the barrier created by their childishness that they grow up. Sheds an bright light on his theory of child development in Volume 5. I understand the defect/compensation to be an instance of social situation of development.

Andy

mike cole wrote:
The work with the blind-deaf that Karl Levitin wrote about seems to be one way to play out Vygotsky's ideas about creating social situations of development where the blind where not functionally blind.

The work of Carol Padden and Tom Humphries (Deaf in America) also bears on these ideas.

mike

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:50 PM, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com <mailto:ulvi.icil@gmail.com>> wrote:

    Volume 2 was one of  my main materials of reading in the first
    semester of
    my master program last year. I went almost through the whole volume.
    It was really interesting to see how Vygotsky imagines the
    solution of the
    problem in terms of the social dimension for handicapped people in
    complete
    consistency with his theory's main features, social-cultural, I mean.

    This one is really excellent: " "A blind person will remain blind
    and a deaf
    person deaf, but they
      will cease to be handicapped because a handicapped condition is only
      a social concept ... Blindness by itself does not make a child
      handicapped"


    Ulvi



    2011/5/10 Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>

    > I have been reading Volume 2 of the LSV CW. This material has
    quite a
    > sharp polemical edge to it. People might be interested in the
    following
    > passage (p. 83):
    >
    >    "Achieving the religious miracle of mankind's eternal dream -
    giving
    >    sight to the blind and speech to the deaf - is the task of social
    >    education as it emerges in the greatest era of the final
    >    reconstruction of mankind."
    >
    > and he goes on (somewhat letting the side down, by contemporary
    prejudices)
    >
    >    "Thanks to eugenic measures, thanks to an altered social
    structure,
    >    mankind will arrive at different healthier conditions of life."
    >
    > and just to complete the idea (which concerns the social
    character of
    > the psychology of people affected by some defect):
    >
    >    "A blind person will remain blind and a deaf person deaf, but
    they
    >    will cease to be handicapped because a handicapped condition
    is only
    >    a social concept ... Blindness by itself does not make a child
    >    handicapped ... Blindness ... is a sign of the difference between
    >    his behaviour and the behaviour of others."
    >
    > Interesting. stuff.
    > Andy
    >
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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