[Xmca-l] Re: Bill's query

[Huw Lloyd]

It's not immediately clear to me who is saying what, in this email,
Michael, and whether you both have agreed upon a distinction of some kind...

Best,
Huw


On 16 April 2018 at 15:05, Wolff-Michael Roth <wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Bill asked me to respond to some questions, but I could not find in my
> trash can the earlier strand. Here the issues he had raised:
>
>
> -------------------
> Since I have bothered to read your book and quote directly from it I think
> my comments deserve a public response. I'll repeat it again here:
>
> Specifically you say that constructivists argue that: (I've *bolded* the
> bits where your understanding of Piaget is different to mine)
> "the individual mind is ... *informationally closed* to the surrounding
> world" (51) (von Glasersfeld said this iin the text where he also discusses
> Piaget, if I remember well)
> "In a constructivist account, she (Melissa) might be said to *incorrectly
> 'interpret'* the object ..." (51) (this is what you typically find in
> constructivist research, for only something in your mind exists for the
> person)
> "As Piaget, modern day constructivists often characterize children's
> knowing
>  *negatively: as lack, deficit ... or deviance* ..." (52) (I have pointed
> in the past to many places where Piaget writes what a child cannot yet do,
> he always uses adult reasoning as (generally implicit) reference for
> characterizing the child. There was  a nice chapter in the 1980s:
> Meyer-Drawe,
> K. (1986). Zähmung eines wilden Denkens? [Taming of undomesticated
> thought?] In A. Métraux & B. Waldenfels (Eds.), Leibhaftige Vernunft:
> Spuren von Merleau-Pontys Denken (pp. 258–275). Munich, Germany: Wilhelm
> Fink. And in Merleau-Ponty's writing you can see the critique of a Piaget,
> from whom children are lesser (adults)
> "In the constructivist literature , we can frequently read that
> *misconceptions
> ... have to be eradicated* (53) (Yes, this you can find in the literature
> on misconceptions, with the very verb "eradicate")
>
> Piaget's best known observation were about conservation, the tall and wide
> glasses, and I've never heard children's responses described as incorrect,
> deficit or misconception but always as a stage that children have to pass
> through. It always seemed me that Piaget respected and understood the
> child's different view of the world. (Well, I just did a quick check, and
> in *The Growth of Logical Thinking, *the verb/noun fail/failure appears at
> least 50+ times, though one would have to check the sense; the verb
> *cannot* appears
> over 60 times, and so on...)
>
> I gather you haven't read Papert or Minsky. I feel their version,
> constructionism, contains many useful insights. (I have, in my
> constructivist days, and I have read many of the books coming from his lab
> [Papert], and I know many of his students personally. And I referenced
> their work amply, until I saw no more benefit in that work.)
> ------------------
>
> Michael
>