[Xmca-l] Re: bildung and obuchenie

[Larry Purss]

Greg, Rod,

Thanks for this article exploring bildung as *serious play*.
The distinction which Ricoeur explores between *socius* and *neighbour*
seems to offer an entry into moral stances as *staying open to the other*
and moving away from *having* re-presentations of the already formed.

It seems the notion of *serious play* as holding one's perspective
lightly [in contrast to frivolous play] and remaining open to alterity and
the other [Gadamer's notion of *fusions of horizons* as entering play]
expands and deepens the seriousness of the understanding of play in
developmental theory. Play moves beyond a particular stage of development
to become developmentally emergent within all of life's engagements. This
notion of *serious* play within a dialogue with *socius* also transforms
the notion of *socius as roles* [as Ricouer explores this distinction].
Serious play moves *beyond* socius and structural relations AS *systems*

Larry




On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:

> I was thinking much the same, Gregg.
> Stephens presents bildung as being a fundamentally social process - the
> self is built out of relationships with others and as we engage with others
> we also come to know more about who we are. I would argue that all
> understanding is essentially social (having a feeling for how what we know
> is known and felt by others) but that this is particularly central to our
> understanding of our 'self'. From this perspective we can only understand
> ourselves by building our awareness of how we are experienced by others and
> playful interactions (social chat, hanging out) is more effective for this
> than more remote forms of study. I learned about obuchenie in the course of
> a wonderful (VERY hot) summer school near Moscow which focused on
> Vygotsky's concept of play. I learned that Russian understandings of
> education have a much wider, tanglier connection into the persons teaching
> and learning than is common in the UK and the USA - which may be why
> Russians are more likely to describe themselves as students of someone who
> was a student of someone who was a student of Vygotsky (for example) -
> being someone's student means you have had an opportunity to get to know
> more of the person than just what is contained in published works. I think
> the same is true of 'character building' (though I share Gregg's
> reservations about the history of this) in English public schools where
> people pay for the company their children will keep as much as for the
> quality of the teaching - and the products of particular schools can be
> quite distinctive and recognisable!
>
> I am impressed by how much is packed into such a short article!
>
> All the best,
>
> Rod
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Greg Thompson
> Sent: 16 June 2014 06:25
> To: xmca-l@ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] bildung and obuchenie
>
> In reading the article I just mentioned (in Anthropology and Education
> Quarterly), I got to thinking that bildung seems very similar to obuchenie.
> I asked a Russian professor who happened to be in a classroom before a
> class I was teaching and she described a concept that seemed very similar
> to bildung. From what I could gather, obuchenie has the same sense of
> "cultivation" that seems to be at the heart of bildung. And of course I
> don't mean "cultivation" in the high cultural sense of being a "cultivated"
> person (although this might have been part of what the early authors
> writing about "bildung" had in mind) rather I mean the idea of a full
> development of the human, not merely the dumping of information into the
> individual.
>
> Anyone have any sense about overlap between these concepts?
> Are they as similar as they seem to me?
> If different, then how so?
>
> And I wonder how people would feel about the term "character education" as
> an English analogue to the German bildung and the Russian obuchenie?
>
> Yes, yes, yes, I know that this aligns with politics that make many people
> sick to their stomach, but frankly, I'm interested in imagining a politics
> that isn't so provincial as the American Left and Right so I'm always
> looking for politically polyvalent concepts. What do you think? Could this
> be a concept that can work in politically polar opposite communities?
>
> -greg
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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