Re: LSV and Defectology

Ellice A Forman (ellice+ who-is-at pitt.edu)
Sat, 7 Feb 1998 13:38:07 -0500 (EST)

Dear Chuck and others,
I read this volume in manuscript form about 10 years ago and was struck by
many of the things you mention in your recent message. For example, in
this work Vygotsky clearly advocates cooperative learning--something I
hadn't seen elsewhere. He also does make some very interesting
recommendations for special education--like those you mention--finding
ways to alter the social conditions of learning so that
children with known sensory handicaps (blindness, deafness) can learn like
everyone else. It seems like special education in his time (and maybe in
ours as well) focused almost exclusively on the source of the "problem"
and very little on ways to work around the handicap.

I've always wondered how much this work influenced special education in
the Soviet Union after Vygotsky's death. Does anyone know?

I'm surprised that you found something on "word meaning" as a unit of
analysis that brings it closer to Bakhtin's notion of utterance. I'll have
to check that out for myself.

Ellice Forman
University of Pittsburgh