While I definitely agree that "play" tends to be ignored at other levels (9
and 14 year old) at least in the sense Vygotsky defined it, in younger
children, I question if there is more than just seeing play by its outward
appearance (not work). My understanding of play is, it is often seen as
opposition to work or rather it becomes defined by what it is not, rather
than what it is. In this sense if we take how Vygotsky saw play at the
preschool age (rules and result) (tools and result) and don't see it as
something one moves beyond, but it also develops I think there are other
possibilities for seeing "play" at different levels.
In this sense, I see Holzman and Newman's work as taking how Vygotsky saw
the ZPD operating in play to different levels. They transform rules and/for
results into tool and /for results with play being the former. Play
(performance, drama, writing etc.) is not in opposition to "reality" or
work, but connected to it. As with children who play mommy and daddy it is
very well connected to reality, but at the same time the child can be what
she/he is not (a head taller than him/her self). In *Schools for Growth*,
I see "play" being elaborated at a variety of levels. In using both
Vygotskian ideas of play and Wiittgensteinian language games the importance
of performance is invoked. From the social therapy centers, to the All
Star Talent Show a variety "play" activities are described.
In Vygotsky's article on play and in later work (*Child Psychology*) on
imagination in late childhood, he makes a pretty direct connection between
the two. So, play (in the preschool period) being not simply a transition
from rules "and" to rules "for" results, but also having an important
relationship to creativity, imagination, or "revolutionary activity" to use
Newman and Holzman's term. As Vera describes in *Notebooks of the mind*
the act of creativity is not in opposition to culture but a gift to it.
For me, Vygotsky arguing for the ZPD in both play and education is of
central importance. The connection is not simply that play has the same
function for younger children that instruction has for older children, but
a "unity of opposites". As Vera describes in *notebooks* that creativity
was not solely embedded within this sole individual against the social, but
that the social; teachers, parents, friends, books etc. facilitated or
supported that creativity.
While "little league" or other activities are play in an opposition sense
(not work) are they in the "developmental" sense. Is what Vygotsky saw as
characteristic of play in preschool better found in other avenues. I tend
to see the 5th D as being more consistent with play in a "developmental"
sense.
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Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
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"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
interests".
L.S. Vygotsky
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