[Xmca-l] Re: English translation of Pedology of the Adolescent

[Larry Smolucha]

Message from Francine:


Regarding tools of the mind (to use Budrova and Leong's terminology), there are two aspects of tools that haven't been acknowledged in this discussion.


First: The concept of  'mental tools' is not literally the same as a manual tool used on an object, it can be used metaphorically or as a broader category of 'tool-usage.'


Second: Tools and tool usage can be co-constructed during play or work activities.

Tools (and their usage) are not always predetermined cultural artifacts. The proper usage of a work tool such as a pair of pliers can be taught in a shop class, but this doesn't rule out improvised use of the pliers in a new creative way.


There is an unfortunate meta-narrative that has accompanied previous new publications on Vygotsky's theories that puts forth the new text as 'the' new correct view of Vygotsky's works. Every new text is an opportunity to raise new questions and open up avenues of research. Instead the new text is too often promoted as the definitive text that supercedes previous interpretations of Vygotsky's theory. It is ironic that David takes issue with Norris Minick's divisions of the development of Vygotsky's thinking in Volume One of the CW in English. I disagreed with Minick when he was first advocating that Vygotsky's real theory was to be found in Vygoysky's writings from 1932-1934 and that Vygotsky's earlier works were of no importance [during a graduate seminar at the University of Chicago in January 1987]. More recently Yasnitsky (2016) has presented the new authoritative 'revisionist' Vygotsky theory.


In spite of these attempts to impose a new authoritative revision of Vygotsky's theory,

individual practitioners and researchers continue to advance the field with what some 'experts' regard as misunderstandings.


As David and his colleagues continue their ground breaking work of translating yet another Vygotsky text, this could open up a new productive dialogue that would carry on through the 21st century. What will Vygotsky's theory look like at mid-century or in the late 21st century? Will it have fallen on the wayside or thrive?



________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 1, 2018 10:10 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: English translation of Pedology of the Adolescent

Much more than this, David. Consider the number of people that think Vygotsky is concerned with "mental tools" and that this constitutes development.

On 2 June 2018 at 00:26, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
Yes, someone on this list once remarked that a pencil has in coded form the history, the function, and even the structure of writing. So a pencil is composed of wood and graphite in one historical period and steel and lead in another; a pencil has the function of marking paper without marking the fingers, and both functions are realized by the structural relationship of the paper-marking element to the covering material.

But I think the key word here is "coded"--the first encoding is only accessible to the historian, the second to the engineer, and the third is accessible, but ulitmately accidental, in the child's own writing. But learning the practice of writing is learning a form of knowing, of knowing written speech: it's not a form of decoding the history, structure and function of pencils. In East Asia we went from bamboo brushes to cell phones with only a generation or two at the pencil stage. In learning how literacy is taught, it's probably more useful to listen to what teachers say than it is to look at what they give the children; it is here that the essential knowledge is laid out in its uncoded form.

My wife's experience of pencils at school was very different from that of her brother: he was the eldest son and got new pencils, while the first time my wife ever used a pencil longer than a stub of a few centimeters she was already in college. Her attitude towards new pencils is still almost reverent as a result, but I don't think it has had much effect on the way she writes. The post-it notes she has left me on this computer seem quite irreverent (particularly with regard to my memory capacity).

dk

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Book with the Seoul Vygotsky Community

Volume 1 of "Pedology of the Adolescent", 분열과 사랑 (in the Korean language)

http://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=148240197


On Sat, Jun 2, 2018 at 5:03 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com<mailto:huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>> wrote:
Item c in David's enumeration makes an appearance in volume 4, p. 60-63. The hankering after "mental tools", in my opinion, is a major misapprehension by students of Vygotsky. It confuses development of the epistemological basis of knowing and activity with the notion of being given a tool! This, in turn, decouples (or ignores) the necessity for practices to embody epistemological forms of knowing from cultural participation. Culture then becomes some arbitrary set of practices that one is indoctrinated into, completely ignoring the necessity for the development in ways of knowing. Maybe the full pedology volume will help to rectify this.

Best,
Huw

On 1 June 2018 at 01:21, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net<mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
I’m holding my breath...!  :)

Martin


On May 30, 2018, at 11:04 PM, Larry Smolucha <lsmolucha@hotmail.com<mailto:lsmolucha@hotmail.com>> wrote:

Message from Francine:

David thank you for the exposition on how  the Pedology of the Adolescent has come down to us over the years. It should be available in English for its centennial (2031).


---George Eliot




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