Re: [xmca] The Meltzoff/Wolves Thread: Mike's "decoupling" and a Sakharovian footnote for David

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

>From Carol:

about the "but" example--I think that is concessive not additive.

2009/8/24 David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>

> Paula:
>
> Yes, I noticed that too. Here's what I make of it. A concept in dialectical
> logic is really a process: it's the emergence of idea from subject and
> object (Hegel's Logic). But the concept in formal logic is really a product:
> it's a definition that includes all and only the members of a set which
> conform to a particular logical operation, so it's at bottom just an object.
>
> The emergence of an idea from subject (syncretism) and object (complex) is
> where Vygotsky gets the distinction between "potential concepts" and "true
> concepts". A potential concept is a concept for others but not for myself.
> For example, there is actually no word in English for the kind of fake
> lemon-lime fizz referred to by the trade names 7 Up or Sprite in America,
> but Koreans refer to it generically as "sai-yi-da", (derived from a
> misapplication of the English word "cider").
>
> For an American coming to Korea, "sa-yi-da" is a potential concept (and a
> source of potential misunderstanding) since it might apply to any apple
> juice but not, at least initially, to lemon-lime soda. It's a concept for
> others but I don't know what it means, and when I use it I may think of it
> as a misapplied English word rather than a Korean concept. (The same thing
> is true, of course, for an American going to the UK, where cider is a form
> of beer made from apples instead of barley and malt).
>
> When the word "immersion" came to the USA (from the Canadian immersion
> programmes) it was a concept for Canadians but not for Americans.
> Notoriously, it was used in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts to mean
> almost its opposite: a one year programme aimed at subtractive bilingualism
> rather than a programme which incorporated the whole of the child's primary
> and secondary education with additive bilingualism as its goal.
>
> I think it's understandable that Mike wants to decouple age and schooling;
> I am always astonished when I talk to American kids about their school life
> and discover that they conceive of it almost entirely as a social milieu
> with hardly any academic content. For our kids (and I think for Vygotsky's
> kids too) it is really the other way around; children here discuss school
> almost entirely in terms of schoolwork.
>
> As for Vygotsky, he says that neither chronological age nor school grade is
> identical with mental age, "(b)ut since the processes of child development
> are closely connected with the teaching of the child and the separation of
> teaching into levels depends on enormous practical experience, then
> naturally breaking childhood up according to a pedagogical principle brings
> us extremely close to a real division of childhood into spearate periods.
> (Vol. 5, p. 187). This is why his periodization includes things like
> "preschool" and "school age"; I'm not sure if he would go for more
> granularity than that.
>
> I didn't get a chance to comment on your gems, Paula.
>
>  ". . .just one name for the same colour . . . like all the other names
> aren't the same colour. . . . So, all the names are actually the colours and
> there aren't any colours [left] in the middle."
>
> It seems to me that "just one name for the same color" is a
> tentative hypothesis, which is then falsified by the next statement "like
> all the other names aren't the same color". The child then hypothesizes that
> each name includes all the colors "So all the names are actually (all) the
> colors." That way there are no colors left in the middle, which there would
> be if there were just one name for the same color, because there are five
> colors.
>
> This is consistent with a complex-collection solution. It's also consistent
> with:
>
> ". . . [the] same names can go in the-what-the places the one's called
> [i.e., the bik corner]"
>
> That is, all the biks can go in the bik corner.
>
> "What I'm doing . . . I'm turning over the one and if it's the same then I
> put it next to them [of the same label]".
>
> That is, if it's a bik then it goes next to the biks in the bik corner.
>
> And "So . . . if it's not the same group then you put it in another group
> that's called the
> group".
>
> That is, if it's not a bik then you put it in another group that called the
> (cev, mur, lag) group.
>
> GEM TWO
>
> "It's not easy but it's quite hard".
>
> Actually, "but" often means "and" in many languages including English:"I"m
> ugly, but I'm gentle." It's not only not easy but it's also quite hard."
>
> GEM THREE
>
> "You can put more less water in here, an'. an. it's more smaller than all
> the others".
>
> The subject has clearly discovered negative quantities. On to
> negative numbers!
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
>
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