Re: For King Beach

From: Peg Griffin (Peg.Griffin@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Wed Jun 01 2005 - 20:45:59 PDT


Yes, the intent about epi/meta/plain-vanilla-linguistic was really in service of the point King makes so well -- Gombert shows that for his work at least the three coexist and I think it is interesting to think about genetic relations among them (and discontinuities within and among them) , too.
Plus is there a pointer to where I could learn more about the New Delhi work?
Peg
----- Original Message -----
  From: Mike Cole
  To: Xmca
  Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:53 PM
  Subject: For King Beach

  Mike and others,

  I am going to dip my oar in the water here from New Delhi where we
  are working with organizations trying to help street and working kids
  build connections (not necessarily similarities) between their lives
  in slums and the government schools--certainly involving
  generalization is a broader sense. However, two points flow from the
  juxtaposition of our current work with this conversation.

  One is our tendency to look for a single overarching characterization
  of generalization, e.g. as ascending from the abstract to the
  concrete or the expansion of local discursive practices. Those of us
  who are psychologists by training might recognize this as our
  discipline's historical desire for single process explanations such
  as learning transfer. Davydov's concept of substantive
  generalization, for example, makes far more sense to me in the
  context of teaching and in science than it does where there are not
  clearly generative "germ concepts." Trying to makes sense of the
  transitions that primary-aged kids make between school and home/work
  involves so many levels of generalization as to make single
  process/single principle constructs problematic.

  The other is a tendency with generalization to focus on that which
  develops with some degree of commonality across social space and time
  rather than on the production of disjunctions and contradictions as
  well. Like Michael Roth here I do find Hegel and Ilyenkov (partic.
  Dialectics of Abstract and Concrete) helpful in thinking about
  generalization more broadly than the production of similarity. The
  contradictions and disjunctions between what the kids must do here in
  their daily lives and what they do in the school classrooms have far
  greater developmental potential than do any hoped for highly
  "abstracted" set off commonalities between studying in school and
  working on the streets (or well-intentioned but misguided attempts to
  "smooth" the daily transitions that these kids make between the
  streets and the school by making "word problems" out of their
  experiences working with their families).

  Cheers,

  King



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