[Xmca-l] Re: Crises and stages/ages

[Andy Blunden]

Ha, ha! Huw, I had never heard of "the Peer Principle" before, but now 
I've read up on it, it very accurately describes what I have witnessed 
in a life time in universities! :)
But the promotion of people to "their level of incompetence" (something 
Australia as a nation is going through at the moment!) is a *pathology* 
of development. The converse pathology is a child who is continued to be 
treated as a child long after they have outgrown childhood, or staff who 
massively over-perform their role, but due to extraneous reasons, never 
get promoted or leave in search of a better position.
While the idea of development vs learning does connote ideas of 
qualitative and quantitative change, I do not believe these abstractions 
provide a rational understanding of human development.
The main thing is that it is always situational.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Huw Lloyd wrote:
> That 'change in social situation' interpretation does crop up quite
> frequently.  But for me it is inadequate and misleading.  Particularly with
> phenomena described by the Peter principle.
>
> For me, development as a distinction from the broader notion of learning is
> simply the accommodation of genuine generalisations affording greater
> reflexivity.  This will, by virtue of the qualitative change, result in a
> different social situation.
>
> Rote and mere factual learning can theoretically actually lead to less
> capacity for adaptation, so Simon may have a particular idea in mind.
>
> Incidentally, I tend to pair that text of Simon's with Vicker's 'Art of
> Judgement'.  Some good, more indirect, thinking there too.
>
> Huw
>
>
>
> On 20 March 2015 at 01:47, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> The distinction I use, Mike, is that in development, not only does a
>> person's activity change, but also that of those in their social
>> surroundings so that the person occupies a new social position or role.
>> Learning is change, without change in your social position. In "Problem of
>> Age" Vygotsky formulates this in terms of change from being an "infant" to
>> "early childhood" or from "early childhood" to being a "pre-school child,"
>> etc. Development is a social relation, involving both characteristics of
>> the person and of their environment.
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>
>>
>>
>> mike cole wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> After sending the note below I encountered the following definition of
>>> learning in Simon's
>>> *Sciences of the artificial* which I am reading with respect to other
>>> (related) matters.
>>>
>>> *Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent
>>> change in its capacity for adapting to the environment.*
>>>
>>> The word, development, does not appear in this book.
>>>
>>> Seems relevant to many long standing discussions of learning and
>>> development in this discourse space.
>>>
>>> mike
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 5:14 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> David ---
>>>> Picking on just one thread from your multiplex comments in the context of
>>>> the discussion on printing presses and digital computer
>>>> ​technologies, i would like to thank you for juxtaposing these​ two
>>>> paragraphs, one from LSV on crises in development, the other
>>>> from Leontiev. I have made a separate header because I am not agile or
>>>> learned enough to keep track of both at the same time,
>>>> the ontogenetic level of analysis is plenty enough for me to try to think
>>>> systematically about in a single message..
>>>>
>>>> \Vygotsky, (could you give pages in current English version so we enter
>>>> the relevant portion of the text?):
>>>>
>>>> These ages (i.e. stable ages--DK) and this type of child development have
>>>> been studied more completely than ages characterized by a different
>>>> course
>>>> of child development (i.e.the crisis--DK). These latter were discovered
>>>> by
>>>> empirical paths, one by one, in a haphazard manner, and many have still
>>>> not
>>>> been shown by the majority of investigators in systems and are not
>>>> included
>>>> in the general periodization of child development. Many authors have even
>>>> doubted the evidence of the inner necessity of their existence. Many are
>>>> inclined to take them more as “maladies” of development, as deviations of
>>>> the process fromthe normal path, than as internally necessary periods of
>>>> child development. Almost none of the bourgeois investigators have
>>>> realized
>>>> their theoretical signfiicance, and the attempt in our book at their
>>>> systematization, at their theoretical interpretation, and at their
>>>> inclusion in the general scheme of child development for this reason
>>>> should
>>>> be seen as perhaps the first attempt of this kind."
>>>>
>>>> Compare:
>>>>
>>>>   “These crises—the three year old crisis, the seven year old crisis, the
>>>> adolescent crisis, the youth crisis—are always associated with a change
>>>> of
>>>> stage. They indicate in clear, obvious form that these changes, these
>>>> transitions from one stage to another have an inner necessity of their
>>>> own. The existence of development of crises has long been known and their
>>>> ‘classic’ interpretation is that they are caused by the child’s maturing
>>>> inner characteristics and the contradictions that arise on that soil
>>>> between it andthe environment. From the standpoint of that interpretation
>>>> the crises are, of course, inevitable, because these contradictions are
>>>> inevitable in any conditions. There is nothing more false, however, in
>>>> the
>>>> theory of the development of the child’s psyche than this idea. In fact,
>>>> crises are not at all inevitable accomplishments of psychic development.
>>>> It
>>>> is not the crises which are inevitable, but the turning points or breaks,
>>>> the qualitative shifts in development. The crisis, on the contrary, is
>>>> evidence that a turning point or shift has not been made in time. There
>>>> need by no crises at all if the child’s psychic development does not take
>>>> shape spontaneously but in a rationally controlled process, controlled
>>>> upbringing.”  (pp. 398-399)
>>>>
>>>> Leontiev, A.N. (1981). Problems of the Development of the Mind. Progress:
>>>> Moscow
>>>>
>>>> ​I take the red​ text to be the crux of the argument, and the kind of
>>>> difference we see in the two men's articles
>>>> about the "problem of the environment."
>>>>
>>>> In American developmental psychology the issue of continuities and
>>>> discontinuities in ontogenetic development
>>>> continues today the discussion taking place in the 1920's and 1930's. But
>>>> I have never seen anyone argue that (say) the syndrome
>>>> of behaviors identified as "the terrible twos" occurs because a turning
>>>> point has not happened in time, nor that ontogeny is rendered continuous
>>>> by
>>>> rational control of parents/society. That, it seems, is the red thread of
>>>> Stalinism that is so offputting in ANL.
>>>>
>>>> I do not love LSV's characterization of non-Soviet psychologists
>>>> treating
>>>> such periods "as deviations of the process from the normal path." I am
>>>> not sure who he is referring to, and perhaps he is right and I just need
>>>> to
>>>> dig deeper into the history of European and American developmental
>>>> psychology. Piaget and Erikson,  two Europeans whose work was influential
>>>> from the 1950/60's don't, at least on the surface, fit this discussion.
>>>> Maybe they do below the surface, or there are other, allied issue to
>>>> raised.
>>>>
>>>> Several years ago we (you and I and Andy and others) sought to
>>>> characterize LSV's developmental theory but could not reach agreement.
>>>> Perhaps it is worth another try.
>>>>
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
>>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>     
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