Re: more on metacognition

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Sat, 10 Jul 1999 13:58:32 +0200

Hi Mike

The Estes article sounds interesting. Myself I'm in the middle of reading
Nicolopoulou & Weintraub on individual and collective representation in
last year's Human Development #4... not to mention everything else I'm in
the middle of reading :-)

Those two quotes, to me, agree a lot with the way your "spinning Jenny"
model of the intertwining of natural and cultural threads in ontogeny from
Ch7 in *Cultural Psychology* -- I can see what Estes means with qualitative
difference, but NO WAY kids figure out they've got brains in their head --
OR what that stuff is supposed to do -- just by shaking their heads and
hearing the beans rattle. I suspect that even younger kids can talk brain
talk in our culture of brain worship. The quote from the four-year-old
sounds a lot like a kid report of some educational TV show... but I suspect
Brains and What They Do are all over the place, in entertainment, too. And
what goes around in the media comes around in peer culture. I think you
would have to go quite far away from here (wherever that is) to get away
from brain talk in children's experience. It MIGHT be easier to go into the
past for the purpose.

Still, the performance of brain culture develops with age and experience.

Eva

At 14.23 -0700 99-07-09, Mike Cole wrote:
>4-year-old: My brain has eyes and they help me see things on the screen.
> It comes straight from the screen into my head, and then my noodle
> turns it around