[Xmca-l] Re: Help With Russian

[Charles Bazerman]

One anecdote:
Before our son could form recognizable words and before he could crawl, but when he could locomote in a wheeled chair (this would place him probably around twelve months), he, my wife and I were all in our kitchen. My wife and I were looking for a cooking implement (I think it was a spaghetti colander, opening cabinets and discussing where it might be.  Our son kept rolling toward a lower cabinet and bumping up against it while gesturing and making some burbling sounds.  We opened up the cabinet door and voila, there it was.  From his ground level perspective he saw things that escaped our vision, and he knew what was in the lower cabinets.  He also understood what we were doing and how he could help.   
Chuck

----- Original Message -----
From: Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
Date: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 9:03 am
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Help With Russian
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>

> Hi David, 
> 
> It seems to me that the translation is reasonable. My interpretation 
> is that a two-year old child is capable of elementary and simple 
> cooperation with and adult. If we exclude locomotion capabilities, the 
> child might be considered somewhat on par with the adult regarding 
> simple cooperation. 
> 
> I am not sure how the child development experts will view this 
> statement. I am not an expert in that area. Also, I am not sure what 
> are the minimal criteria for cooperation and how cooperation is 
> construed by the authors. It is also possible that the authors use 
> criteria that are very different than the criteria in the literature 
> we use. It is a matter of different conceptualizations, paradigms, and 
> traditions.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Lubomir
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu 
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of 
> David Kellogg
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 3:19 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Help With Russian
> 
> We're working through Vygotsky's very long chapter on infancy in the 
> "Child Development" book he was working towards the end of his life. 
> He has just introduced Blonsky's partitioning of infancy into three 
> stages, on the basis of the presence or absence of teeth. Then, the 
> Russian Collected Works (foot of p. 303) has this:
> 
> "На 2-м году жизни ребенок равномощен взрослому в малоподвижной 
> комнатной обстановке и между ними устанавливаются уже отношения 
> сотрудничества, правда элементарного, простого сотрудничества."
> 
> The English Collected works renders this as:
> 
> "In the second year of life, the child is equal to the adult in a room 
> in a situation where little movement is required and between them a 
> relation of cooperation, although elementary and simple, is established."
> 
> But this doesn't make any sense at all, at least not in English. Is it 
> possible that it's a misprint?
> 
> David Kellogg
>