[Xmca-l] Re: The LCHC Polyphonic Autobiography

[mike cole]

Thanks for finding the repitition, David. As many times the text has been
read and edited by many people, errors of this sort, and errors of thinking
(of course!) remain. It can be edited. We have minimal resources, but
enough to fix such errors, so its very helpful to have them pointed out.

When we get a Forum functioning, your comments would be just the sort of
contribution that would enrich the usefulness of the document.

In a later chapter you will see that we found Labov's conclusions
concerning the comparability of talk in a formal test and in a less formal
conversation at a kids' home are more problematic than people remember.

An unfinishable undertaking, in principle.

mike

On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 2:42 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, great stuff. Useful stuff. Quotable and citeable stuff!
>
> One of the big advantages is that it is (presumably) still editable. In
> ChapterTwo, the section on Psychological Theories of Cognitive Deficit
> contains a repetition, to wit:
>
>  "Deutsch, like Hunt, believed that proper training could help mitigate the
> effects of insufficient early experience. She pointed to research by
> Covington (1967) in which children were who designated as higher or lower
> status on the basis of their parents’ education were asked to discriminate
> between pairs of abstract stimuli. The findings showed a marked difference
> between the two groups. Happily, after fourteen sessions during which
> subjects were asked simply to look at the stimuli, the children identified
> as lower status improved twice as much as the upper status children, by
> then performing at an indistinguishable level. On the basis of this and
> related evidence, Deutsch concluded that with appropriate training,
> children could learn to make the kinds of perceptual distinctions that are
> important to education like Hunt, believed that proper training could help
> mitigate the effects of insufficient early experience. She pointed to
> research by Covington (1967) in which children were who designated as
> higher or lower status on the basis of their parents’ education were asked
> to discriminate between pairs of abstract stimuli. The findings showed a
> marked difference between the two groups. Happily, after fourteen sessions
> during which subjects were asked simply to look at the stimuli, the
> children identified as lower status improved twice as much as the upper
> status children, by then performing at an indistinguishable level. On the
> basis of this and related evidence, Deutsch concluded that with appropriate
> training, children can learn to make the kinds of perceptual distinctions
> that are important to education."
>
> I didn't realize that Labov's work was directed against Bereiter and
> Engelmann. I guess this makes it a bit more understandable. Bereiter and
> Engelmann are almost heroically wrong in their notion that consonant
> deletion and copula elision (e.g. "Dis bi daw" instead of"This is a big
> dog") create superwords that cannot be analyzed. This is wrong in the usual
> way (empirically wrong, as Labov proved). But it's also wrong in a kind of
> heroic way: it leads to the merciless reduction of language to meaningless
> parts, something which they then pursued  and which they still pursue
> today, in their pedagogical method.
>
> Suppose we discovered (as many elementary school kids do) that cursive
> script is an impediment to learning how to segment words into letters and
> thus slows down learning to read and write, particularly for kids from
> families which don't write in cursive (say, parents who telephone or text
> each other instead). It's easy enough to start the kids on printing block
> letters. But we should then not be too surprised to discover that they
> actually reinvent cursive writing as they develop fluency (and in fact they
> even reinvent the original purpose of elaborate writing when it first
> developed, which was to limit literacy to the privileged and the few).
>
> So the real question is not the Bereiter and Engelmann question--what is
> the phonological or graphological technology that stands in the way of
> universal literacy? It's the Bernstein and Halliday question: why does the
> technological and even the pedogogical equalization of literacy make so
> little difference? Why, as Ruqaiya Hasan puts it, was Luria's optimism
> about the difference that education would make for Uzbek peasants so
> misplaced? Why, in the USA, does the head start of "Head Start" peter out
> so fast? We know that kids in lower elementary still talk like their
> parents. But by middle school they are talking more like each other. So why
> do they so often use their newfound autonomy from the parental code to
> reproduce classes in cliques, to reinforce their social isolation instead
> of break out of it?
>
> One explanation is to go outside language altogether, and simply point to
> the underlying nonlinguistic realities: people with guns and money
> protecting concentrated forms of property inequality through extreme,
> institutionally disguised, forms of ritualized violence (in the USSR,
> orchestrated famines, and closer to home mass incarceration, differential
> access to health care, and other forms of legal mass murder). But as the
> very next section of the Polyphonic Autobiography argues, what arises in
> contexts is realized in texts as well as vice versa--although maybe not at
> the level of the phoneme and the grapheme.
>
> So a better explanation has to include the idea that certain meanings are
> differentially accessible to children. Because we are talking about
> meanings, this has more to do with the social context than with some notion
> of impoverished graphology or reduced phonology. But for the very same
> reason, these social contexts are not simply people with guns and money but
> also wordings and even the ways they sound and are spelt.
>
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> "The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit:
> Narrative and Dialogue in Story-telling with
> Vygotsky, Halliday, and Shakespeare"
>
> Free Chapters Downloadable at:
>
> https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2096-the-great-
> globe-and-all-who-it-inherit.pdf
>
> Recent Article: Thinking of feeling: Hasan, Vygotsky, and Some Ruminations
> on the Development of Narrative in Korean Children
>
> Free E-print Downloadable at:
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8Vaq4HpJMi55DzsAyFCf/full
>
> On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 2:05 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
> > Fine idea to add that paper by Joe, Larry. Although he was a big
> > contributor to the early chapters, he did not send us material for his
> > person page, which has a delightful picture of Joe with Lois and Lenora
> > Fulani taken a year ago.
> >
> > Adding the paper is easy, but it would be great if one of Joe's or recent
> > colleagues would send us a fuller people page for him. Polyphony is not a
> > one party affair!
> >
> > There are a lot of places where addition of articles/chapters/books would
> > enrich the site. If people send suggestions to the contact address on the
> > site, we can insert them in the right places.
> >
> > mike
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 7:44 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Mike,
> > > This polyphonic autobiography and the two term taken in conjunction
> > > (polyphonic)  (autobiography) speaks o the convergence (and divergence)
> > of
> > > voices.
> > > In the spirit of this conjunction may I suggest including  link to
> joseph
> > > Glicks essay (Relations Between the Individual and the Socio-Cultural:
> > the
> > > ZPD and the ZPWE and the Philosophy of Second -Hand Knowledge).
> > >
> > > The back and forth relationship seems to embody this spirit with a
> > history
> > > back to the 1960’s.
> > >
> > > I hear (and listen) to our polyphonic nature
> > >
> > > Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> > >
> > > From: Luisa Aires
> > > Sent: July 22, 2017 5:23 AM
> > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > Cc: Laurel Friedman
> > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The LCHC Polyphonic Autobiography
> > >
> > > Dear Mike
> > >
> > > Thank you so much!
> > > I see Culture as Action.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Luísa A.
> > >
> > >
> > > 2017-07-22 12:11 GMT+01:00 Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>:
> > >
> > > > What a beautiful project, Mike and everyone else involved at LCHC!
> And
> > > > what an important document for anyone interested in how CHAT came to
> > the
> > > > West. Thanks so much, Alfredo.
> > > > ________________________________________
> > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.
> edu
> > >
> > > > on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> > > > Sent: 22 July 2017 03:10
> > > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > > Cc: Laurel Friedman
> > > > Subject: [Xmca-l]  The LCHC Polyphonic Autobiography
> > > >
> > > >                             July 20, 2017
> > > >
> > > > Dear XMCA-o-philes,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I am writing to inform you about the *LCHC Polyphonic Autobiography,
> *a
> > > > project begun by LCHC members following the Lab's receipt of the
> Sylvia
> > > > Scriner award at AERA several years ago.  The site is not perfect. It
> > was
> > > > created collaboratively over the years through email exchanges and
> face
> > > to
> > > > face discussions as life allowed. We are still in the process of
> > getting
> > > > the Forum associated with the document working in a reliable fashion,
> > and
> > > > other user friendly measure. We are still hunting down those whose
> life
> > > > paths we have not had the time/resoures to track down yet. I really
> is
> > > > incomplete.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > But as the death of Joe Glick has reminded me, Time waits for no one.
> > > John
> > > > Gay, who was there at the beginning of this story is still with us
> but
> > > > heading toward 90. So the time has come.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > That Joe joined us in our odd venture provided me with an education
> in
> > > > developmental psychology and a life long companion in seeking to
> > > understand
> > > > more deeply, the role of culture in human development.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > So here, belatedly, is an account of the 50 year history of LCHC up
> to
> > > the
> > > > time of my retirement. Its future is to be found Section 6 of the web
> > > page
> > > > which can be found at the following address:    lchcautobio.ucsd.edu
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Suggestions of ways to improve this document are warmly welcomed (so
> > long
> > > > as they are accompanied by the volunteer labor to implement
> them!).When
> > > the
> > > > Forum is up and running, your comments and contributions to the
> > > discussion
> > > > are most welcome.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Mike
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Department of Education and Distance Learning, Universidade Aberta
> > > Centre of Studies on Migrations and Intercultural Relations (CEMRI)
> > > R. Amial, nº 752, 4200-055 Porto, Portugal
> > > laires@uab.pt
> > > www.uab.pt
> > >
> > >
> >
>