Dear Peter and everybody-
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Moxhay [mailto:moxhap@portlandschools.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 12:34 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: personalizing voice
>
> Eugene wrote:
>
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >>
> >> Eugene (and everybody):
> >>
> >> Very very interesting interpretation of Davydov. (I've visited School
> >> No. 91 and
> >> would like to hear more about your experience there some time.)
> >
> > Wow, I would like to hear your impressions. When did you visit it? Was
> > it
> > still under Davydov's rule (which means before 1983)? Please share you
> > impressions!
>
> I was there much more recently, in 2000. I went with Boris Elkonin and one
> of Davydov's master teachers & curriculum authors, to learn more about
> the elementary math curriculum, in particular. Actually, School 91 was the
> last of three "Developmental Instruction" schools I visited. My impression
> was that the school was truly exceptional due to its long history as an
experimental
> school (back to D. B. Elkonin in the 1950's?) and because many of the
teachers
> were not ordinary teachers but curriculum creators, etc. I heard elsewhere
that,
> unlike the other schools I visited which drew students from the local
population,
> School 91's population included many students of highly educated parents
who
> specially lobbied to send them them (in Soviet days, this included
> dissidents).
I visited the school last year in summer. I could only find one teacher who
used to work during Davydov's "reign" there. It was summer when I visited
and I do not know what was going on then. I do not know how much they
continue the instruction and curricula that Davydov developed.
>
> So, although I was thrilled to visit this "historical" school, it was
> not as interesting to
> me as the other schools I visited where the population of teachers and
> students seemed
> closer to what I was used to in the U.S.
Why was that?
>
> Also, Eugene, can you fill me in on the history of School 91 after
> 1983? When Davydov
> had his troubles in the 1980's, did the experimental curricula just
> stop? If so, when were
> they revived?
After death of Brezhnev, Davydov was dismissed from his Institute and
expelled from the Communist party. I do not know why exactly but it was a
rumor then that with death of Brezhnev, Davydov lost his protection. But it
is only a speculation. I have heard from some dissident circles that Davydov
made some services to governmental organizations including law enforcement
(????) but I do not know details (Davydov's name is mentioned in very a
famous dissident essay "How to be a witness [in KGB interrogation]" written
in 1970s (I have that essay and it is available in California library in
Russian).
After Davydov dismissal, the school became under attack. Davydov's
colleagues and students including Rubtzov, B. El'konin, Guzman, and others
tried to protect the school and its practices. At the end of 80s the school
seemed to recover. Since I immigrated in 1988, I do not know much of its
fate. Certain high school programs are continued but I do not know what is
going on in elementary or middle school.
>
>
> > Peter, I'm actually interested in "lischnost'noe" learning. The
> > problem is
> > that in English it becomes either as "identity-based" learning or
> > "personalized" learning. Since I hate the notion of identity, I turned
> > to
> > "personalized" learning. I'd appreciate if you help me to articulate
> > what
> > "lichnostnoj voice" can mean for English speaking community. Thanks a
> > lot
> > for raising this issue!
>
> Eugene, I think it would be extraordinarily helpful to try and get
> across in English
> what you mean by "lichnostnoi" voice. No doubt others on this list can
> help more
> than I can. Can I start by asking whether you think the Russian concept
> of
> "lichnost'" ("personality") is sufficiently understood by your
> non-Russian colleagues?
Many cultural concepts "live" in discourses rather than in definitions. The
discourses themselves "live" in practices and social relations. That is why
it is so difficult to make "translations" of some cultural concepts from one
culture to another. For example, when I visited Russia last year I was
surprised that people used the American-born term "political correctness" in
ways that really puzzled me (and my family). They referred PC to the
situations when one should talk carefully in order not to disturb another
person who has more power.
OK, back to "lichnost'". In my view, it is intertwined in the web of the
following notions: conscience, transcendence of current circumstances,
uniqueness (particularity), and sympathy. Paulo Freire's notion of
"conscienization" as feeling pain and injustice for other people definitely
strokes close to home. However, it is very little concerned with
"fingerprinting" of one' personality that can be find in the notion of
identity. The main question is not "Who am I?" but rather "How to do the
right things in particular circumstances?" It concerns with
"nravstvennost''' which can be loosely translated as "contextual and
relational morality".
> My understanding comes only from Davydov's Teoriya Razvivayushchego
> Obuchenie
> (and references therein to Leontiev and Rubinshtein). Davydov writes
> about lichnost'
> (personality) as having to do with the tension between conformism and
> nonconformism: how
> does a person express what is different about himself or herself, only
> not from
> the point of view of the person's "external image" (what I wear, how I
> talk) but the
> personal "internal image." Lichnost' is related to creativity, and to a
> person's striving
> to create something that has not been created by anyone else,
> corresponding to
> the person's "unrepeatable" situation in life.
I like that, Peter! The issues of conformism and creativity (as opposition
to conformism in non-moral context) are definitely central to "lichnost'".
>
> How do you understand "lichnost'"? (And do you consider "lichnostnoi
> voice" to be
> a separate concept?)
I'd define it as "in-world-actualization" (cf. "self-actualization"). In the
concept of lichnost', one has to listen to the world rather than self to
unfold one's potentials.
What do you think?
Eugene
>
> Peter
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