Louise,
You have expressed very well my experience and I'm just a neonate in Pokemon
culture.
While reading the chapter in Cultural Psychology in which the difficulties
in getting children to remember are described I couldn't help but contrast
that situation with the detailed memory my 6 year old has of the 150 Pokemon
(+1), their attributes, etc. I totally agree that this is more than just a
marketing strategy.
Paul H. Dillon
-----Original Message-----
From: Louise Yarnall <lyarnall@ucla.edu>
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, December 02, 1999 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: Pokeman ZPDs
>Hi,
>
>I caught only a couple of the recent Pokemon posts (the conservative and
>liberal critiques). As mother of two Pokemon hobbyist sons (ages 10 and
8),
>I just wanted to interject that while the liberal critique definitely rings
>with my natural inclinations, the educational researcher in me has found
the
>Pokemon culture to comprise a very interesting, highly motivating set of
>child tools and practices.
>
>I would expect Mike to be interested in Pokemon because it definitely seems
>like a "leading activity" to me. After spending several weeks last spring
>at the dinner table watching my boys talk rapid-fire in a foreign language,
>I finally broke down and played a few Pokemon card games with them.
There's
>a lot more to this game than consumerism. From a Piagetian perspective,
the
>Pokemon culture exploits the early elementary child's fascination with
>understanding categories and taxonomies. From a Vygotskian perspective,
the
>card game provides a leading activity for engaging in strategic planning
and
>mathematical operations.
>
>Ever since I played the game last summer, I decided that Pokemon, fad or
>not, was cleverly conceived not just from a marketing perspective, but from
>a child development perspective too.
>
>Louise
>
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