Linking everything together and being in my feelings
Reading about play after reading the Socialist Transformation of Man really got me thinking about what Vygotsky is really trying to say through all his writing, at the very base of it. In the socialist development of man, he speaks about how the intuitive biological tendencies of primitive man, coupled with his very basic development in the social realm are today, replaced by a hyper-complex web of social dimensions that ubiquitously rule our lives. In his piece on imagination, he talks about how our affective tendencies, which are also quite primal in a sense, reach a structured whole in our adolescence and then fade away into the background as we become more "serious, professional" individuals (haha). When talking about play, Vygotsky says that play is not something that is purely something that brings pleasure. He says that play, while often perceived to be juvenile and fanciful, it actually something that can bring a child to the zone of proximal development with everyday activities that he finds both pleasant and unpleasant.
Often, you see kids pretending to put each other to sleep. Do they like doing this? Yes, probably because it causes a banter, but do they actually like going to sleep? No. Of course not! An understanding of the rules of the environment, says Vygotsky, is not possible without play, because a child merges what he sees everyday with a well-constructed simulation of it during play. It's as if the child puts on a bigger person's shoes during play. But, just as all great things that help us control our environment, Vygtosky says that we often let this part of our capacities sink back as we get older. We just try to "be" instead of constantly trying to be more successful at something. We don't jump ahead and practice new possibilities with rigor by just trying to be better at something; we associate that with top-down learning and scaffolding, where someone helps us do it. Even in most of our classes, we always try to read for class and merely for class. Do we need to regress a teency weency bit and be simpler to be better like Vygotsky is saying? Do we need to think about the possibilities with the work we do in a more imaginative way to be successful? I wonder what you all think about this. What's even more fascinating is that these analogies, at least to me, really help understand the conflation between ZPD and scaffolding. It helps to show how one doesn't lead to another, but rather than both are ideally needed to learn and most importantly, develop.
It seems to me like we are always on the anvil of something great as a race, and then we tip over back into the rabbit hole of finding the correct way to ascertain the truth and look at our world in a way such that we know exactly how to control it. What's fascinating for me is that we always do this because of the AHA moments that we have as science develops. Are we making hasty decisions when we decide what the next scientific hot topic or flavor of the month is? It's all such a wonderful circular argument that makes you really think about what we're doing as a race today. Life is an extremely transitory journey where we often take so many things for granted.
Reading Vygotsky is like inception.
Often, you see kids pretending to put each other to sleep. Do they like doing this? Yes, probably because it causes a banter, but do they actually like going to sleep? No. Of course not! An understanding of the rules of the environment, says Vygotsky, is not possible without play, because a child merges what he sees everyday with a well-constructed simulation of it during play. It's as if the child puts on a bigger person's shoes during play. But, just as all great things that help us control our environment, Vygtosky says that we often let this part of our capacities sink back as we get older. We just try to "be" instead of constantly trying to be more successful at something. We don't jump ahead and practice new possibilities with rigor by just trying to be better at something; we associate that with top-down learning and scaffolding, where someone helps us do it. Even in most of our classes, we always try to read for class and merely for class. Do we need to regress a teency weency bit and be simpler to be better like Vygotsky is saying? Do we need to think about the possibilities with the work we do in a more imaginative way to be successful? I wonder what you all think about this. What's even more fascinating is that these analogies, at least to me, really help understand the conflation between ZPD and scaffolding. It helps to show how one doesn't lead to another, but rather than both are ideally needed to learn and most importantly, develop.
Me thinking very hard about what it is exactly that we're doing lol.
It seems to me like we are always on the anvil of something great as a race, and then we tip over back into the rabbit hole of finding the correct way to ascertain the truth and look at our world in a way such that we know exactly how to control it. What's fascinating for me is that we always do this because of the AHA moments that we have as science develops. Are we making hasty decisions when we decide what the next scientific hot topic or flavor of the month is? It's all such a wonderful circular argument that makes you really think about what we're doing as a race today. Life is an extremely transitory journey where we often take so many things for granted.
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