When Vygotsky came upon the scene there was the awful situation of
orphans everywhere because of WW1. This was a major concern of
Vygotsky's and in particular the role of cultural forces in
compensatiing for these "defects". These children were often initially
educated in a regular classroom, but treated bably and eventually tossed
out on the street. In his book on defectology Vygotsky refers to this
as the "thesis".
He was also highly critical of approaches that attempt to educate the
hard of hearing, blind, cognitive and emotionally disabled out of their
cultural context. In the educational context this could be applied to
the various approaches of exclusion that we are trying to move away from
in schools. He was even quite crass about this at some points stating
we don't want to a new "breed of man" referring to the socialization
attempts that seperate "disabled" kids from their peers. Exclusion,while
better than the first, Vygotsky referred to as the anti-thesis.
Vygotsky's synthesis is best described by,
"Alexander Meshcheryakov directed an outstanding research project and
made a notable contribution to the method of practical realisation of
the truth of Marxist philosophy. The human being, as the subject of
conscious, goal-oriented creative activity is formed in intercourse with
other people, the /modes /of which develop historically and /the means
/of which preserve in themselves the universal (social) determinates of
all the objects of this activity. Meshcheryakov's experiment has
provided practical proof that a human being only acquires the ability to
think and have conscious knowledge of the world when the real historical
time of the development of culture becomes his personal biography. "
http://marxists.org/archive/mikhailov/works/riddle/riddle4.htm
One could not be educated as the new socialist man or superman if ones
socialization was seperated from ones peers. I think this puts Vygotsky
at odds with the variety of identity politics surrounding special
education. Vygotsky's bias definately went towards the more 'cultural
oriented" activities such as schooling. In defectology (vygotsky's
text) he very importantly emphasised auxilliary means; brail for hard of
seeing; sign language for hard of hearing; collective for cognitive and
emotional disabilities etc. I think this is the key to Vygotsky's
synthesis.
Yet, Eric's concern is interesting. Many disabilities were brought
about by educational concerns. How in a given educational context this
or that individuals needs are not being met. If a child is functioning
satifactory in the classroom it is very unlikely they will be classified
with a disability (emotional and learning disabilities). For
emotional, if it is not seen in more than two contexts (school,
community, home) they will not be classified as such. I had a girl last
year who we got classified as ED in fifth grade. She was violent, ran
away from home, suicide attempts etc. In second grade she did not get
this classification because while the behavior was experienced at
school, community, with natural mother, but it was not experienced by
the foster parent who had her for two weeks.
N
MnFamilyMan@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 11/15/2002 11:12:44 AM Central Standard Time,
> mcole@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>
>
>> You might ask yourself when and whether and how making or not making
>> such distinctions makes a difference.
>
>
>
> Precisely Mike,
>
> The main purpose is to try and remove the strangle-hold
> classroom-bound cultural artifacts testing method that does not
> provide the proper assessment for working with the 16-21 age group I
> specifically work with. The main reason I do agree with Kozulin's
> interpretation is that he frames the scientific v. spontaneous
> concepts within Vygotsky's overall interest with disabled
> individuals. Vygotsky preferred to focus on the functional level of
> the capital I'' Individual rather that compare the disability to some
> presoposed 'able' person. IN many cases the disabled person will
> function much better in 'everyday' culture as compared to the
> 'scientific' culture of the classroom. Or an even more interesting
> way to view it is that in terms of today's special education policies
> and procedures the assessment of the disability is strictly limited to
> how it impares a person's pursuit of education and a person who
> functions along the 'average' lines of academic success but is failing
> miserably in the community is not viewed as disabled.
>
>
> Make sense,
> eric
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