Galina gave you exact and very useful references to Boris
Elkonin's articles (I guess that you know him personally). Indeed
he's dealing with the notion of ideal form a lot during last few years.
His father Daniil Elkonin wrote an afterword to the
fourth volume of Vygotsky's collection of works. In it
he cites Vygotsky's lecture on "The Fundamentals of
Pedology": "None of the known to us types of development
presupposes that at the moment when the initial form takes shape
there can not exist a higher, ideal, coming into being form by the end
of development. Also it can not be interconnected with the first
steps the child makes on the way to the development of this
initial form. This is the greatest peculiarity of child
development compared to other types of development among which we
can never find this situation" (page 395).
What did you mean writing about Durkheim? Ideal form is not
collective mind. Of course in his critics of empirism one can
find similarities with Vygotsky in the approaches.
Michael,
I admire your efforts to read Boris Elkonin's articles. They are
difficult to read even in the original. Mainly your
interpretation is correct. However the idea of crisis of
childhood is different from the notion of crisis in child
development. The last notion concerns personal development aand
the first one - childhood as a historical and cultural phenomenon.
Elkonin's hypothesis is that "natural" historical conditions
for child to meet with the ideal form (in that context we can
understand the ideal form as an arhetype of adulthood)
disappeared (extended family, peers groupping, rites of
passages). This leads to alienation between childhood and
adulthood. He calls this situation - the crisis of childhood. The
question for educators is - how can education respond to
this historical and cultural stage of the history childhood. We
wrote about the possible response together with Boris Elkonin in
"Voprosy psychologii " (#1, 1993).
I have to mention that my interpretation is an educational
(pedagogical) one. It could be different from psychological one.
So, I am wondering what will Galina say.
I guess that rituals are sometimes cultural forms of event
of presenting (or emerging) ideal form.
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-- __________________________________________________________Isak Froumin Institute of Experimental Pedagogy with Laboratory School Russia, 660017, Krasnoyarsk 17, box 6087 Fax:(3912)434682 E-mail: frumin who-is-at sc106.krasnoyarsk.su
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