I wonder if I fully understand what motivated your message, though.
Judy ?-)
At 12:21 PM 1/31/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello everybody--
>
>Judy wrote on 1/29/96
>>Eugene, it's also possible for a mother to be an activity theorist,
>>to be aware of the "as if" status of her infant's "understanding" - of
>>the discrepancy between her own and her infant's understanding - and
>>to respond to baby's cues "as if" they made sense within a "shared" social
>>context that the baby can not yet interpret on her own, without believing
>>or even wanting to believe that the baby "really" understands.
>
>I think this is both a very interesting and risky proposition. If taken
>seriously by the mother it can destroy all mother's basic skills of a
>traditional middle-class parenting. For example, Barbara Rogoff teaches
>undergraduate class on Children and Cultures. She explains in much details
>how children in many cultures sleep together with parents and what are
>benefits of that in the context and ecology of these societies. But she
>does not sleep with her own children. Middle class parents learn how to
>sleep alone and do not learn how to sleep with babies. Not careful move in
>sleep can harm or even kill the baby.
>
>There are many things of doing things but those ways based on history of
>socialization in them. Focusing just on technology and benefits of how
>people do what can overlook ecology and history of socialization in these
>diverse ways of doing things. I'm not saying that experimentation or
>innovation is a bad thing, I just warn that it is risky business and should
>be approached carefully with full expectation of unavoidable (and even
>desired) breakdown of your mastery of doing things -- the only mastery that
>you know and socialize in.
>
>Another question will be how much your experimental "voluntarism" will be
>supported and tolerated by your ecology and environment. By breaking
>practice you can break your own ecology and even safety net.
>
>Let me finish on this conservative note :-)
>
>Eugene Matusov
>UC Santa Cruz
>
>------------------------
>Eugene Matusov
>UC Santa Cruz
>
>
>
Judy Diamondstone
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University
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Eternity is in love with the productions of time. -- Wm. Blake