Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Andy--

I guess I am simply having trouble interpreting texts on xmca at the moment
in general! Sorry

The issue of the "back end" of the transition to adulthood is not passe, of
course! Quite the opposite, it is a new academic industry and a major life
issue of millions of people around the globe in ways that were unanticipated
by our forbearers. And it certainly is fraught! Both for participants and
analysts. Ask any 35 year old unemployed BA living at home with parents or
the parents or Ethiopian high school leaver who cannot find work!!

Does LSV use the term, institutionalized age-levels? The institutions part
of this process ordinarily goes under-theorized by psychologists and I seem
to have missed that.
mike

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> I did not mean to impute a framing of the question in those terms to you
> Mike, but I can't quite see why you describe the idea of what Vygotsky calls
> the "transitional period" ending in the "beginning of adulthood" as
> something passe and fraught. Is there a country in the industrialised world
> which does not have an age (or ages) at which the person qualifies to vote,
> drive cars, give informed consent, join the army, run for election, serve on
> juries - all those rights which characterise adult citizenship in a country?
> Vygotsky says these instituionalised age-levels "depend on enormous
> practical experience" (LSV CW 5p187) so it seems a fair conclusion to draw
> that there is some reality behind a hear-universally institutionalised idea,
> some basis in patterns of child development in the given society.
> Mind you, he also says "We do not include youth (i.e. the period between
> adolesence and adulthood) in the scheme of age periods of childhood for the
> reason that theoretical and empirical studies equally compel opposition to
> stretching child development excessively and including in it the first
> twenty-five years of human life. In the general sense and according to basic
> patterns, the age eighteen to twenty-five years more likely makes up the
> initial link in the chain of mature age than the concluding link in the
> chain of periods of child development." (LSV CW 5p196) But that is really
> not my concern. I am not writing a book on child development! :) It's those
> youth I am most interested in. The development which proceeds on the basis
> of a person's thinking and acting in concepts is a different kind of
> development than that which he or she goes through during childhood, and
> does not exhibit the same laws.
>
> Andy
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> We also did not write about the transition to adulthood at what used to be
>> called the beginning of adulthood, a frought notion indeed. There is not a
>> large literature on that topic which is only pre-figured in the first
>> edition of our textbook when we were allowed to include a life-span
>> treatment of development.
>> mike
>>
>> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net<mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>    Apologies Gregory. I slipped a note about Vygotsky in the middle
>>    of my commentary on Cole, whereas in fact, Mike did not refer to
>>    Vygotsky in this chapter.
>>    Culpa mia.
>>    Andy
>>
>>
>>    Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:
>>
>>        Ivo and Andy,
>>        Also in the adolescence section of Mike's textbook is
>>        reference to William Damon. He has a wonderful 3-D graphic of
>>        the development of self-concept from infancy through adolescence.
>>        His writings on moral development are quite good too. The
>>        major point that I always appreciate is that moral development
>>        should not be considered separately from development of
>>        self-concept (Andy, you might appreciate the way in which
>>        development of self-understanding and development of social
>>        understanding are caught up with each other - the development
>>        of an I that is We?).
>>        Although I don't recall any explicit reference to Vygotsky, he
>>        draws on an Vygotsky's kin (according to some), the American
>>        pragmatists James Mark Baldwin and William James.
>>        Damon and Hart 1992. Self-understanding and its role in social
>>        and moral development. In Lamb, M. and Bornstein, M. (Eds.)
>>        Developmental Psychology: An advanced textbook. pp. 421-464.
>>
>>        Graphic is on p. 433.
>>        I'm happy to share a copy directly but prefer not to
>>        distribute widely.
>>        -greg
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>>
>>
>>    --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>    *Andy Blunden*
>>    Joint Editor MCA:
>>    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
>>    <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
>>    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
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>>    <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
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> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA:
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
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