RE: [xmca] Kndergarten Cram: When is play?

["David H Kirshner" <dkirsh@lsu.edu>]

> So here is a variation on Ulvi's hypothesis: what we are seeing in the

> routinization of middle-class education in the US is a de-skilling  
> process, part of the gradual erosion of the middle class, pushing  
> their children down the social scale, making their educations more  
> like those of the (lower) working class. 

This resonates--thanks, Jay.
It really is a major reorientation of social priorities as the
perquisites of thoughtful engagement with learning are limited to a
narrower and narrower segment of society.

David



-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Jay Lemke
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 4:02 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Kndergarten Cram: When is play?

Many interesting points, of course, but I am struck by the issue of  
social class differences in play&learning and adult attitudes toward  
play. As well as cultural differences.

If we make a provisional binary out of creative learning vs. rote  
learning, and mean by this to include more playful approaches to  
learning (as well as learning from what appears to be, and maybe felt  
by kids as, play) on the one side, and all forms of over-structured,  
boring, authoritarian, prescribed-all-to-hell teaching (I won't say  
learning) on the other, then there has been a long discussion in the  
US about the hypothesis that more privileged social sectors favor the  
first, while less privileged ones favor the second.

One story about this is that elites learn to play, as their life  
privilege entitles them, while the oppressed learn to work without  
being in control of what they do. Another is that elites don't need  
highly structured learning conditions because their habitus, from home  
and family and peers, pre-adapts them to the kinds of "thinking/ 
discourse" that succeed in school, while more oppressed groups,  
lacking that advantage, need very explicit, structured instruction if  
they are to be able to master the Master's meaning system at all.

So here is a variation on Ulvi's hypothesis: what we are seeing in the  
routinization of middle-class education in the US is a de-skilling  
process, part of the gradual erosion of the middle class, pushing  
their children down the social scale, making their educations more  
like those of the (lower) working class. The _upper_ middle class has  
strongly resisted NCLB and its moronic pseudo-testing regimen and over- 
prescribed curricula, and the ruling class has just ignored it for the  
most part in their elite private schools. There have even been  
lawsuits against education departments on behalf of elite schools to  
exempt them from a lot of crap on the grounds that what they are  
already doing is better than what the "reforms" aim to produce.

The main liiberal support for NCLB came from those like Ted Kennedy  
who saw it as a way to put a floor under the worst of the education of  
the poor. [NCLB for our lucky non-US readers stands for the idiotic,  
rhetorical name given to the US education reform law "No Child Left  
Behind" ... which already says it was looking for support from those  
favoring the worst-educated students, even through it was drafted by  
those looking to subjugate the next generation to authoritarian models  
of education.]

How does this play in other countries/cultures?

JAY.

PS. In the US, it is only the upper middle class that corresponds to  
what is called the middle class in most other places. Our very broad  
middle class is really white-collar workers and well-paid blue-collar  
workers and their families. The upper middle is quite a distinct  
group, professionals and junior to middle managers. All an  
oversimplification of course, but my points won't make sense to non-US  
readers otherwise.


Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke




On May 7, 2009, at 1:42 AM, David Kellogg wrote:

>
> And then again, David, perhaps NOT. Here are some countervailing  
> facts to consider, before we leap to conclusions about the malign  
> effects of Confucianism (which, like most truly ancient cultural  
> traditions, has an irrepressibly creative and humanist core) on  
> dysfunctional American education.
>
> a) The old Stevenson studies that first found a massive advantage  
> for Asian schools also discovered that American schools spend FAR  
> more time on "seatwork" than Asian schools do.
>
> b) The 2002 PISA evaluation which found a massive advantage for  
> Korean schools in things like literacy, science, and math ALSO found  
> a massive advantage in creative problems solving (in fact, Korea  
> scored first, whereas it was only second or third in other  
> supposedly stronger areas based on rote learning).
>
> c) The areas where we in Korea do have the MOST cram school  
> involvement (e.g. English) are consistently our WEAKEST areas, not  
> our strongest (we were 19th out of 20 countries in the British  
> Council International English Language Testing Service evaluation).
>
> d) In the sixties, Robert Kaplan, the founder of "Contrastive  
> Rhetoric" attempted to argue that the "eight legged essay" of the  
> imperial examination system (baguwen) was responsible for Chinese  
> students' errors in composition; Mohan and Lo demonstrated that such  
> effects could be found in work of almost ALL foreign students. Most  
> Chinese students could not compose an eight legged essay in Chinese  
> (it's actually a quite artistic form which takes a long time to  
> master). Spoiler alert: Kaplan also believed that Russians and  
> Frenchmen write in zigzags, Arabs in spirals, and the only true  
> linear language was...you guessed it...English.
>
> There's more! This is from Goncu, A. (1999) Children's Engagement in  
> the World: Socicultural Perspectives. CUP.
>
> Farver, J.M. (1999) Activity setting analysis: A model for examining  
> the role of culture in development. pp . 99-127.
>
> p. 116: 'Most European American mothers believed that play was a  
> learning experience and was related to positive developmental  
> outcomes for children, wheres most Korean-American mothers said that  
> play was primarily for the children's amusement.'
>
> Tudge, J., Hogan, D., Lee, S.-E., Tammeveski, P., Meltsas, M.,  
> Kulakova, N., Snezhkova, I and Putnam, S. (1999) Cultural  
> heterogeneity: Parental values and beliefs and heir preschoolers'  
> activities in the United States, South Korea, Russia, and Estonia.  
> 62-96.
>
> Tudge et al. made 180 observations of each child in the survey and  
> tabulated to what extend they were involved in play, lessons, and  
> work. (p. 87): 'Out data made clear that even if the cross city  
> differences in values and beliefs did not fall into a consistent  
> pattern, the same cannot be said of social class. In terms of both  
> values and beliefs the results were precisely as predicted.'
>
> Interestingly, they found that children in Korea were most involved  
> in play (122/180 observations) and kids in Oninsk the least  
> (86/180). But they find FAR more academic play in middle class kids  
> in Korea than working class kids (nearly three times as much).
>
> All in all, exactly what Vygotsky would have predicted. There is a  
> profound, inner link between imaginative play and schoolwork, that  
> is, compulsory behavior patterned according to abstract rules.
>
> That profound inner link is NOT available through rote work and  
> empty verbalism, which despite a superficially "scientist" dressing  
> is actually based on the exercise of the lower psychogical  
> functions. Neither is it available through giving one's involuntary  
> attention span a workout or running around meaninglessly through the  
> "adventure time" provided by popular media.
>
> (I think THIS is the REAL way in which capitalism insinuates itself  
> into the educational system; and THAT is why capitalist educational  
> ideologues like Thorndike have never accepted the Vygotskyan  
> distinction between lower and higher psychological functions.)
>
> That profound inner link is always and ineluctably bound up with the  
> meaningful word. I think the point about Mike's problem (and the  
> excellent paper by Sfard he sent around after it) concerning the  
> multiplication of two negative numbers or a negative and a positive  
> is that there really IS a link between written language, grammar,  
> and mathematical ability.
>
> "It does not happen that arithmetic develops certain functions in  
> isolation and independently and written speech develops others. Each  
> different subject has in part a common psychological basis. The  
> seizure of conscious awareness and mastery is in the forefront of  
> development in the same way for the learning of grammar as for that  
> of written speech. We find it in the learning of arithmetic as well  
> as at the centre of attention n the learning of scientific concepts.  
> Abstract thinking of the child develops in all of his lessons and  
> his development does not decompose itself in fact into separate  
> courses corresponding to diverse study materials which are divided  
> up as in school learning." (Pensiero e linguaggio, trans. by L.  
> Meccaci, p. 266)
>
> So it passes by way of what Vygotsky delightfully calls "scientific  
> imagination". That this expression strikes us as oxymoronic is yet  
> more testimony to the poverty of our science and the paucity of our  
> imagination, or at least the dysfunctionality of the non-Confucian  
> education that supplied our understanding of both.
>
> "Voluntary attention and logical memory, abstract thinking and  
> scientific imagination develop each other, thanks to a basis which  
> is common to all of the higher psychological functions into a unique  
> complex process; the common basis of all of these higher  
> psychological functions, whose development constitutes the principal  
> neoformation of the school age, is the seizure of conscious  
> awareness and mastery." (p. 268).
>
> Conscious awareness and mastery! Not the sort of thing you want the  
> sons and daughters of the working classes playing with, is it?
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
>
>
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