Re: [xmca] interesting perspective on Luria's work in Asia

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Peter--

This summary is interesting for two extra reasons to XMCA readers at
present:

It totally overlooks massive evidence of the context specificity as defined
by situation of data collection on the effects: its possible to reverse them
with small changes in procedure AND

the article for discussion uses this kind of general reason concerning
cognitive style as a theoretical background to the discussion, already
ongoing, of classroom discourse patterns.

mike

PS-- An look at all that brain talk!! yee gads.

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> David Brooks: Gail, I don't know if you had a chance to see my
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17brooks.html>  column Tuesday,
> but China always gets me thinking big. I look at the long history and
> bright
> future of that civilization-state and suddenly you've got to chase me down
> with a butterfly net to impose the grip of reality on my grandiose and
> free-floating ideas. It's runaway Spengler Syndrome.
>
> Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more emphasis on
> individuals.
>
> But I do have one more Grand Historical Theory to spin out for you, and it
> involves thinking styles. Different cultures and groups have different
> styles of thinking, or to be more precise, the average behavior is
> different
> from one group to another. So is it possible that Westerners, on average,
> have thinking styles that make them ill-suited for the problems of the
> future while Asians have styles that make them better suited?
>
> Gail Collins: David, I still remember when Japan was going to eat our lunch
> with their natural inclination toward teamwork. I'm issuing an early
> protest
> because when it comes to anything having to do with the brain, you are so
> far ahead of me that when you're done I know I won't have a good rejoinder.
>
> David Brooks: Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more
> emphasis on individuals. This seems like a gross generalization but it is
> robustly supported by hundreds and hundreds of studies. Richard Nisbett's
> book, "The Geography of
> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/selected.html<http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Enisbett/selected.html>>
>  Thought" summarizes
> some of the evidence.
>
> If you show Americans a fish tank, they'll talk about the biggest fish in
> the tank. If you show Asians a tank they will make, on average, 60 percent
> more references to the context and the features of the scene. Western
> parents tend to emphasize nouns and categories when teaching their kids,
> Korean parents tend to emphasize verbs and relationships. If you show
> Americans a picture of a chicken, a cow and grass, they will lump the
> chicken and the cow, because they are both animals. Asians are more likely
> to lump the cow and the grass because cows eat grass. They have a
> relationship.
>
> The mode of thought more common in Asia is better suited to the complex
> networks that make up the modern world. The contextual, associational style
> is simply more valid. The linear style we've inherited from the Greeks is
> less adaptive toward the modern age. I think the West may be doomed.
>
> Avoid giving too much credence to theories about how any group is
> particularly well adapted to anything.
>
> Gail Collins: David, you may be the one who understands how the brain works
> but I am so far ahead of you on doom that you will never catch up. I was
> educated by nuns. My classroom had a map in which countries were only red
> (communist) or pink (leaning communist) or white (free - for now). The only
> white countries were the United States and Ireland.
>
> David Brooks: I haven't even mentioned gender differences yet. I think the
> same things I've said about Asians can be said about women as compared to
> men.
>
> I don't know if you've had a chance to read this stuff as part of your book
> research, but my understanding is that the cognitive processing of male and
> female brains is mostly the same except for in one area: social cognition.
> Women, on average, pick up more social signals.
>
> Gail Collins: Still skeptical. Given the long span of time in which women
> were said to be particularly well-suited for everything from typing (tiny
> fingers) to domesticity ("She has a head almost too small for intellect and
> just big enough for love.") I'm becoming increasingly leery of giving too
> much credence to theories about how any group is particularly well adapted
> to anything.
>
> David Brooks: I actually don't care if this is genetic or cultural (to the
> extent there is a difference between these things). My point is that in a
> service economy, the ability to pick up social cues is a huge advantage.
>
> Basically, I'm saying that two groups I'm a member of - Westernized men -
> may have been well adapted to the agricultural and industrial societies,
> but
> our thinking styles are not well adapted to the networked age of social
> information flows.
>
> I'm not just saying the West is doomed. I think Western men, like me, are
> doomed unless we change and adapt quickly!
>
> Gail Collins: Ah, what I hear is the sound of a group that was on top for
> so
> long and then goes into a funk at the first sign of really serious
> competition. As a nation, we're in trauma over the very idea that anybody
> else might be the economic superpower. As a gender, guys who were perfectly
> fine with the idea of women in business or in Congress are totally unnerved
> with the thought that their gender someday actually might not be running
> the
> show.
>
> The one advantage China definitely has is its longer view of history. One
> day you're perfecting gunpowder and toothpaste and moveable type - then you
> fall into a 500-year slump. There's no inevitable winner - in fact, there
> doesn't need to be a winner at all. We can all do fine.
>
> As far as China goes, my main concern is that we don't let this turn of
> events make us nuts. We're not going to be able to go back to borrowing our
> way to an ever-higher standard of living and we're going to have to be
> smarter, especially in the way we run our politics.
>
> For Western men, the good news is that we Western women do not intend to
> maintain economic prowess on our own. You're coming along, too. Otherwise,
> it really wouldn't be any fun.
>
>
>
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