Andy, Jon, et al.
To make progress in this discussion, it seems to me that we have to keep
in mind that Vygotsky is taking for granted in the writings cited that
about the age of 13-14 (in his day and place) young people would be entering
secondary/high school with a long history of forms of discourse that he
deemed essential to the formation of "true concepts."
There is great uncertainty that adolescence exists as a universal stage
of human development with people arguing both sides of the issue. But
that the specific character of a transition from childhood (itself an
historically contingent "stage of life") to adulthood (ANOTHER
historically contingent stage of life) is hugely variable in its
cultural manifestations seems beyond
question to me. Citations, starting with Cole and Cole, The Development
of Children back as far as edition one in the late 1980's, are abundent.
So Elkind is talking about a particular class and historical moment. The
child soldiers of this world have had, in general very little exposure
either to decent nutrition or anything like education as Vygotsky
understood it.
My basic suggestion to avoid needless controversy (I am assuming
controversy is necessary, and can be generative of our own conceptual
development) we make clear in such discussions that cultural-historical
conditions in question.
That doped up 8 year olds, scared out of their wits and blasting their
neighbors with uzis are not controlling themselves from the outside via
scientific concepts would not surprise me.
mike
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
The issue came up from a qualification of a qualification. It is
true what you said, that the Heidegger thread is also relevant to my
book, because it is about concepts.
The issue came up because I had a couple of pages describing
Vygotsky's claim that only in adolescence are children able to
acquire true concepts, the difference between true concepts and
pseudoconcepts and the unity of the two, and how it is only because
of the young person's entry into a social position with professional
responsibilities, participation in politics, and so on, outside the
protection of the home and school support system, that they can
acquire true concepts.
But then I thought, what is the evidence? how would one know anyway?
and what would happen if a child still too immature for true
conceptual thinking were to be thrown into responsibility in the
wider world, having the rug pulled out from under them too early, so
to speak? True conceptual thought is (1) impossible because they
have not yet laid down an adequate substratum of pseudo- and
potential concepts, but (2) possible because they are participating
in societal activity, with a social position, etc. And then I
remembered this phrase "grown up before their time," so I thought:
what does that look like? what sort of concepts does the child
acquire? do we have pre-adolescents learning concepts? what is the
negative effect of such precocity?
The same section of Vygotsky (vol 5 pp 26ff) where I found him
talking about the adolescent learning concepts in the context of
*ideology* as a result of participating in societal life
(instability, rigidity, romanticism), I found things like "The unit
..., the simplest action with which the intellect of the adolescent
operates, is, of course, not a representation, but a concept," and
"The word, becoming a carrier of the concept, is ... the real theory
of the object to which it refers," and lots of other stuff relevant
to the other thread.
Andy
Duvall, Emily wrote:
Good points, Jon.
I wonder, Andy, if you are looking more at children who take on
adult
rolls due to traumatic/ unplanned change in their sociocultural
conditions/ in the necessity of the activit(ies) they must
perform...
~em
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
[mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
On Behalf Of Jonathan Tudge JRTUDGE
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 7:46 AM
To: ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>; eXtended Mind,
Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Adult before their time?
Greetings, chaps!
Don't we need to distinguish between children who have been
recruited as
child soldiers or who currently live in war zones and others who
are viewed as "adult before their time"? Just because many of us
have become
accustomed to a lengthy adolescence and an adulthood that may
not start until the 20s, it was typical until the last couple of
hundred years in most places for adulthood to start far earlier.
Even after passage of
the Factory Acts in England at the start of the 19th century
10-year-olds
were still working up to 12 hours a day. In rural parts of
Africa, at least until the advent of universal (or at least
widespread) primary education
girls as young as five were routinely expected to care for their
younger
siblings, and there was no expectation that engaging in productive
labour would only start at age 10.
Jon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Tudge
Professor
155 Stone
Mailing address:
248 Stone Building
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
PO Box 26170
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
USA
phone (336) 256-0131
fax (336) 334-5076
http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/facultystaff/Tudge/Tudge.html
Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> Sent
by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
10/23/2009 05:30 AM
Please respond to
ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>; Please respond to
"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
To
"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
cc
Subject
Re: [xmca] Adult before their time?
I think the answer to my question may be found in the
combination of a paper which Emily sent me: "What Children Can
Tell Us About Living in Danger" (by James Garbarino, Kathieen
Kostelny, and Nancy Dubrow Erikson Institute for Advanced Study
in Child Development, Chicago), and Vygotsky's chapter on
"Development of Thinking and Formation of Concepts in the
Adolescent" in Volume 5 of the LSV CW.
Garbarino & Co. look at a number of zones of conflict, such as
the Gaza Strip, and among other things observe that "fanatical"
ideology is a vital support for people, especially children, who
are faced with enormous moral and emotional pressures. Not hard
to see why.
Vygotsky mentions first of all in his explanation of how
adolescents acquire concepts as part of a completely new type of
thinking characteristic of the "transitional period," the entry
into and an interest in ideology. Ideology has the same
psychological structure as "science" (cf Davydov's paper on
"scientific concepts") especially the abstract sciences like
maths and physics. He also says that the child who has just
arrived at concepts cannot acquire dialectical thought. This
means that adolescents first acquire conceptual thought in the
form of relatively rigid systems of meaning, a.k.a., "fanatical"
ideology.
This rings true to me. The child forced to grow up before their
time who have to make sense of the wider world of societal life,
politics and war, acquires fanatical, or at least, overly rigid
or simplified *ideology*. What greater ideologist is there than
the young Red Guard?
Does this ring true or false to people who have more experience
than I do in this business?
Andy
Duvall, Emily wrote:
Beah's story is amazing... there was a very good interview
with him
that
is well worth digging for and listening to/viewing. If you
search, child soldier, on amazon you will find a plethora of
offerings.
I would also suggest a few others...
Iqbal by F. D'Adamo about the rug making industry in
Pakistan (Iqbal
was
assassinated for his work in fighting child labor after he
escaped and
became an international icon in the war)... there are other
biographies
on his life
The Circuit, by F. Jimenez may be a bit out of the realm...
child of
an
illegal immigrant... it is autobiographical, by the way.
Peter Sis' book, The Wall, is an interesting memoir/ graphic
novel on
growing up behind the Iron Curtain as a child... being
encouraged to
report on loved ones, etc makes for an interesting view of
soldiering.
The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang
is another
interesting perspective on children coming from war
Another direction that could be interesting are Viet Nam and
other vet
memoirs... my husband went over as a teenager and his
experiences in
recon totally changed him... in other words, the PTSD... I
suspect
that
this is the underlying, common effect that you will find in many
stories
involving children war, being stolen/sold, abandoned, etc.
Some texts, such as Hiroshima, No Pika by T. Maruki,
biographical
narrative, don't really get at the child's experience with a
child's
voice, but are powerful nonetheless.
I also have on my 'to be read' shelf:
Shattered: Stories of Children and War, by J. Armstrong
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust A. Zullo
Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries by Z Filipovic
Best, Em
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
[mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
On Behalf Of David Preiss
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 11:15 AM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>; eXtended
Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Adult before their time?
Dear Andy,
As regards child soldiers, this recent book is a good
reference: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by
Ishmael Beah.
It is testimonial.
Best,
David
On Oct 22, 2009, at 11:33 AM, mike cole wrote:
Andy --
Two quick points:
1. The consequences are for development of the whole
child in society so
focusing on the cognitive seems especially
counterproductive in the cases of
interest to you and xmca. And may, indeed, provide a
privileged site for
inquiry. But its very dangerous. A colleague of a friend
of mine doing such
research was shot and killed in Rio a few days ago.
2. Good Brazilian street children or child soldiers or
several
cognate
categories and you should be inundated. I was.
mike
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Mmm that looks interesting in itself, about the
modern fad among middle
class parents for pushing their children to
overperform academically. But I
suspect I am not going to get an answer to what's
intriguing me that way.
When a child is suddenly deprived of their support
systems - becoming a
street urchin or a child soldier for example or
having to look after their
siblings if the parents become dysfunctional - then
they are thrown into a
social situation which we talked of before, in which
it is possible to learn
concepts, the very opposite of course of the
"scientific concepts"
inculcated at school. I was wondering if the result
is a very stunted kind
of thinking (like the policeman who knows how to
spot a criminal by age,
race, and so on) or precocious wisdom which
understands that words express
social meanings, not just what they appear to mean
on the surface, and
watches the lay of the land.
But what is that precocious worldliness in cognitive
terms?
Andy
mike cole wrote:
Early claims:
David Elkind, The hurried child. Cambridge.
DeCapo Press. 1981
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 3:25 AM, Peter
Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu
<mailto:smago@uga.edu>> wrote:
Not quite the same sort of trauma, but there's
plenty of pop analysis on
the life of Michael Jackson these days. p
Peter Smagorinsky
Professor of English Education
Department of Language and Literacy Education
The University of Georgia
125 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
smago@uga.edu <mailto:smago@uga.edu>
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
[mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
]
On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 4:19 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [xmca] Adult before their time?
Can anyone tell me of any research done on
the idea of
children who have "grown up before their
time," as a result
of war, family disaster or otherwise having
been projected
into the adult world on their own? And how
is such a
characterization "adult before their time"
made? On the
basis of the use of concepts?? Lack of
interest in play??
Andy
Tony Whitson wrote:
I would add Nietzsche, along with
Heidegger and Derrida, to what Michael
says.
Heidegger is sometimes dismissed as
incomprehensible, but Nietzsche and
Derrida are more often treated as wild
and reckless writers who can be
fun to read, but without looking for any
careful argument.
If you don't expect either of them to be
writing seriously, you won't
read them seriously and you won't see
what they're writing. N said as
much, but then if you're not taking him
seriously, you won't take him
seriously when he says that, either.
I saw an interview with D once where the
interviewer, in the interview,
in D's presence, ventured that
deconstruction was basically the same as
the US sitcom "Seinfeld"--It's just a
matter of taking everything
ironically. D replied that if you want
to know anything about
deconstruction, you need to do some
reading. The interview was pretty
much over at that point.
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Wolff-Michael Roth
wrote:
I don't know what people read that
Heidegger has written. I personally
have not met a person who has read
Sein und Zeit to the end, people
appear to read secondary literature
rather than the primary. Moreover,
nobody appears to be talking/writing
about Unterwegs zur Sprache
(David K., this should be of
interest to you), or about Holzwege and
other works. First, I can't see
anything that would fit the political
ideas of Nazism, for one, and I
can't see anything that would be
understandable in terms of the quote
that Steve contributes below.
I do understand that Heidegger is
difficult to read---I had to take
repeated stabs since I first
purchased Sein und Zeit in 1977.
Heidegger, by the way, does very
close readings of some ancient Greek
philosophers. And when you pay
attention to his writing, and do the
same with Derrida, for example, then
you begin to realize that the
latter has learned a lot from the
former.
Now that my English is better than
my German ever has been (although
it was my main language for 25
years) I personally know about
the
problems of translations. Above all,
any of the mechanical
translations that have been proposed
on this list won't do even the
simplest of texts. And it is about
more than literal content.
We can learn from both of them,
Heidegger and Derrida, that things are
more difficult than they look, and
even more difficult than reading
their texts.
Michael
On 21-Oct-09, at 7:37 PM, Steve
Gabosch wrote:
I appreciate Martin's insights on
Heidegger, as I do those of others.
I for one don't really know that
much about Heidegger's ideas. I am
glad to learn from those that have
studied him.
Here is an interesting glossary
entry on Heidegger in a book of
Marxist essays by George Novack
(1905-1992), Polemics in Marxist
Philosophy: Essays on Sartre,
Plekhanov, Lukacs, Engels, Kolalkowski,
Trotsky, Timpanaro, Colletti (1978).
The glossary to the book was
written by Leslie Evans and edited
by Novack.
"Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976) -
German existentialist philosopher.
His ideas were best expounded in
Sein un Zeit (Being and Time, 1927).
A philosopher of irrationalism.
Heidegger maintained that the chief
impediment to human self-development
was reason and science, which led
to a view of the world based on
subject-object relations. Humans were
reduced to the status of entities in
the thing-world which they were
thrown (the condition of
"thrownness"). This state of
inauthentic
being could be overcome neither
through theory (science) nor social
practice, but only by an
inward-turning orientation toward
one's self,
particularly in the contemplation of
death. Heidegger was influenced
by Kierkegaard and Husserl (see
entries), and in turn deeply affected
the thought of Sartre, Camus, and
Marcuse. He was himself a chair of
philosophy at the University of
Freiburg in 1928 after his mentor,
Edmund Husserl, had been forced to
relinquish it by the Nazis.
Heidegger supported Hitler, which
led to his disgrace at the end of
World War II and his retirement in
1951 to a life of rural
seclusion." (pg 307-308)
- Steve
On Oct 21, 2009, at 5:04 PM, Andy
Blunden wrote:
I think Martin is completely right
in the proposition that (taking
account of the continuing
fascination the academy has with
Heidegger)
his works should be read to
understand why and how Fascism and
Heidegger's philosophy supported
each other and what should be done
about it.
As Goethe said "The greatest
discoveries are made not by
individuals
but by their age," or more
particularly every age is bequeated
a
certain problematic by their
predecessors, but the different
philosophers confront that
problematic in different ways.
To say that
those on either side of the
battle lines in the struggle of a
particular times have something
in common, seems to be in danger of
missing the point.
Also, in my opinion, Husserl and
Heidegger may have been responding
to Hegel, but between them they
erected the gretest barrier to
understanding Hegel until Kojeve
arrived on the scene. But that's
just me. A grumpy old hegelian.
Andy
Martin Packer wrote:
A few days ago Steve made
passing reference to an
article that
apparently Tony had drawn
his attention to, titled
"Heil Heidegger."
I Googled and found that it
is a recent article in the
Chronicle of
Higher Education.
<http://www.chroniclecareers.com/article/Heil-Heidegger-/
48806/>
The focus of the article is
Heidegger's links with and
support of
the Nazis, and its principal
recommendations are that we
should stop
paying attention to
Heidegger, stop translating
and publishing his
writing, and "mock him to
the hilt."
I feel I should comment on
this, since I have
occasionally drawn on
Heidegger's work in these
discussions. I certainly
have no intention
of apologizing for
Heidegger, who seems to have
been a very nasty
person, who was responsible
for some deplorable actions.
I do want
to question, however, the
proposal that because of
these facts we
all would be better off
ignoring his writing.
I was introduced to
Heidegger by a Jewish
professor of philosophy
who shared his last name
(coincidentally as far as I
know) with one
of the best-known victims of
antisemitism. At that time
less was
known about Heidegger's
Narzism, but by no means
nothing, and
I
recall discussion in the
classroom of the issue. I
came to feel that
the last thing one should
try to do is separate the
man's work from
his life. Perhaps if he had
been working on some obscure
area of
symbolic logic, say, that
would have been possible,
but Heidegger
had written a philosophy of
human existence, and this
would seem to
*demand* that there be
consistency between what he
wrote and how he
lived. Indeed, perhaps it
would be important to study the
man's
writings to try to
understand where he went
wrong; at what point in
his analysis of human being
did Heidegger open the door
to the
possibility of fascism? I
think in fact that it is in
Division II of
Being and Time, where
Heidegger is describing what
he called
'authentic Dasein,' which
amounts to a way that a
person relates to
time, specifically to the
certainty of their own
death, that the
mistake is made and the door
is opened to evil.
Carlin Romano, the author of
the article, doesn't seem to
know
Heidegger's work very well.
Dasein ("being there," i.e.
being-
in-
the-world) is not a
"cultural world," nor do
"Daseins intersect," as
he puts it. (But I suppose
that he is mocking
Heidegger.) And that
brings me to my other reason
for recommending that we
continue to
read Heidegger, his politics
and (lack of) ethics
notwithstanding.
It is that his analysis
throws light on issues that
have been raised
in this group, and were
important to LSV and
others. I am sure it
seems odd to link a Nazi
philosopher to a socialist
psychologist,
but I am hardly the first to
see connections. Lucien
Goldmann wrote
"Lukacs and Heidegger," a
book in which he
acknowledged the
incongruity but argued that
there are "fundamental
bonds" between
the two men's work, that at
the beginning of the 20th
century "on
the basis of a new
problematic first
represented by Lukacs, and then
later on by Heidegger, the
contemporary situation was
slowly
created. I would add that
this perspective will also
enable us to
display a whole range of
elements common to both
philosophers, which
are not very visible at
first sight, but which
nevertheless
constitute the common basis
on which undeniable antagonisms
are
elaborated" (p. 1).
What is this common basis?
It is that of overcoming the
separation
between subject and object
in traditional thought,
overcoming
subject/object dualism, by
recognizing the role of
history in
individual and collective
human life, and rethinking
the relation
between theory and practice.
As Michael wrote, Heidegger
reexamined
the traditional
philosophical distinction
between an object (a
being) and what it *is* (its
Being), and rejected both
idealism and
essentialism to argue that
what an object is (and not
just what it
'means') is defined by the
human social practices in
which it is
involved, and in which
people encounter it. These
practices,
of
course, change over
historical time, so the
conditions for an object
to 'be' are practical,
social, and historical. And
since
people
define themselves in terms
of the objects they work
with, the basis
of human being is practical,
social, and historical too.
I continue to believe that
this new kind of ontological
analysis,
visible according to
Goldmann in the work of both
Lukacs and
Heidegger, influenced in
both cases by Hegel, is
centrally
important. If we can learn
from studying Heidegger how to
acknowledge these cultural
conditions without falling
into a
valorization of the folk,
without dissolving
individuals in
the
collective (a failing of the
Left just as much as the
Right), then
we will have gained, not
lost, by reading his texts.
Martin
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel,
Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev,
Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20
ea
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
David Preiss
ddpreiss@me.com <mailto:ddpreiss@me.com>
http://web.mac.com/ddpreiss/
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca