----- Original Message -----
From: Ricardo Ottoni <rjapias who-is-at ibm.net>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 1:54 PM
Subject: Re: Play
> Nate,
>
> I believe that is also necessary call attention to the specific role of
> play in categorial thought development process, according to Vygotsky.
> Through play, the objects loose their deterministic power (in relation
> to children's actions)and the behaviour of children began to be directed
> by their ideas.
In general, I agree with you but does not this occur to an extent in any
activity - the process of recontextualization. For me, there is somewhat a
danger, as in early Bruner, of seeing certain types of activity;
constructive activity or play as a precurser to symbolic thought. Play, of
course, has significance in this way because that recontextualization is
important, maybe even essential, for learning to read and write. The
danger I think is seeing certain types of activity, play for example, as
not itself having complexity or recontextualization. One of Vygotsky's
critiques was that play should not be over intellectualized (Piaget) that,
like all activity, it was connected to the child's needs, motives, and
desires. It is important to remember that as those needs, motives, and
desires change so will the recontextualization. Many, but not all
cultures, for good historical reasons, have valued the symbolic as a
mediational means, but that is not the only way it can occur. The way I
was looking at play was it having a complexity in itself irrespective of it
"developmental significance" to categorical thought or learning to read or
write.
>
> Another thing I think it is important to be said is that, to Vygotsky,
> play is not strictlly a simbolic action as believed Piaget. Instead of
> referering to this kind of action as a "simbolic play", Vygotsky prefers
> to use only the word "play" ('brinquedo' in Portuguese). To him, the use
> of "pivots" by children were governed by the objects
> appropriate/possible
> use as a "double" of the thing to be "represented". This, for him, it is
> not a symbolization stricto sensu - where everything can be everything.
> (A pen or a pencil could not be used as a "horse" by a child who wants
> to "ride a horse")
I think your right, it was seen more as a sign than a representation for
Vygotsky. But symbols are also signs as least for Vygotsky, I think Piaget
as saw them more as representations of action. Walkerdine critiques this
aspect of Piaget's work in *Mastery of Reason* in which she argues the
symbolic for him was just action written down. She argues for a
dialectical sign/signified relationship.
>
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Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
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"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
interests".
L.S. Vygotsky
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