In a special issue of J. Russian and East European Psch, Nov-Dec 1999
devoted to work of D.B. Elkonin there is an article on development of
play that may be of interest to some of you. Issues of cultural variation
are not first and foremost in this article. But Elkonin's thesis has large
sections on the history of play which we might talk Pentti Hakkarainen
into translating.
My guess is the LSV would predict that the reduced interest in symbolic
pretend play and restricted roles among the Maya would in fact reduce and/or
delay the development of their ability to separate meanings from objects/
actions.
What sort of evidence might he cite. Well, in a monograph by Sharp, Cole,
and Lave (SRCD monograph) it was found that rural Mayan adults who had
not been to school treated syllogisms as empirical statements. In one
memorable case, our informant presented the following syllogism to his
wife:
In Mexico City All the Women Are Beautiful
I met a woman from mexico city.
Was she beautiful or not?
The wife instantly became furious with our informant, a well known
philander and started to berate him for running around with women in
Mexico City.
On another occasion, an elderly woman asked us why we were asking questions
about Mayan language. We answered that we were teachers who wanted to be
able to help children who attended school. "But," she responded, visibly
concerned, "If you take our language back to the city with you, what will
do when we want to talk to each other? You will have our language, it will
be gone."
For a contrarty interpretation of the influence of schooling, there is a
paper on the history and future of schooling on my web page. I raise this
possible LSV interpretation because it would, under some interpretations
of the term, make plausible the claim that he is a contextualist, but also
a believer in cultural progress such that people from what he and Luria
considered more advanced cultures would, because they have more powerful
symbolic psychological tools, think more powerfully. Contextualism wedded to
a strong theory of development as progress.
A parting thought.
mike
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