Paul et al-- Sorry to be a flakey participant. Life gets like that
sometimes, like the day before classes start.
Paul's comment pasted in above fits a part of what I had in mind. Any
system that is supposed to work entirely bottom up, from simple-->complex,
from rote--> higher order, etc1--->etc2 is deeply suspect in principle.
I cannot do justice to the social complexity/hierarchy/schooling discussion
give time constraints. I am aware of relatively non-hierarchical small
group societies with relatively minimal divisions of labor (child bearing
being a big exception but child CARE having interesting exceptions). I
was of course speaking of larger social entities. By my (half literate)
analysis, schooling, the rise of city states, literacy, efficient killing
devices, efficient farming devices, and hierarchy often arise as part
of a single process. All exceptions to this pattern are to be treasured
as keys to understanding why it dominates modern lif and where its
flexible points, if any, might be found.
Thanks, Eugene, for bringing up the Davydov math curriculum. We ought to
have a good summary published in MCA because it ought to interest
everyone and VVD's own publications are not entirely user friendly.
Finally we got a real summer day here in the fog of so calif.
mike
./