[xmca] Corragio!

Mike:
 
You sounded a little discouraged. Let me show you something. It's mostly in Korean, but I think you will like it anyway:
 
http://cafe.naver.com/vygotsky
 
As you can see, it's a very big cafe style website: many rooms, lots of material, and many different functions. Among other things it does this:
 
a) It's a major means by which the work of MCA and xmca gets translated into Korean and disseminated in Korea. 
 
b) It is a vehicle for the "Institute of Progressive Education", founded and funded by the Korea Educational Workers Union (recently legalized and just now being unlegalized by the new Yi Myeongbak dictatorship).
 
c) It's the main place where our Thinking and Speech translation group meets while I am here in America with my wife.
 
But I didn't set it up.To tell you the truth, I discovered it quite by chance, through one of my grad students, only about a month ago. It was set up back in April by militants of the KCTU, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.
 
Like any cafe frequented by busy workers, it's a bit of a complexive mess. Alongside the work of Michael Cole (lovingly translated into Korean by the director of the Institute of Progressive education, Bae Hicheol, who teaches third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a single classroom school up in the mountains of Kangwando) there are ruminations about Desmond Morris and the Naked Ape that would make you cringe.
 
There are even things that make me cringe, like the invidious comparison between Yrjo Engestrom's work with Finnish primary education and our own work (we've got TEN times the population!)
 
But this is the power of complexive thinking! When one branch runs into a dead end, you almost always find some offshoot flourishing. Volosinov thought that was a GOOD thing, not a BAD thing.
 
And yes, Volosinov really LOATHED Saussure; one of the things he liked to point out was that if Saussure's view of language was correct, any breakdown in the system would render ALL of the other elements meaningless. Fortunately, complexive thinking is not like that.
 
dk

      
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Received on Fri Dec 19 17:58:58 2008