The rat in the empty cage


Reading The Socialist Alteration of Man this week immediately reminded me of a TED talk I happened across a while back. I’ll summarize since I’m posting a couple hours before class (sorry), but essentially, the speaker, Johann Hari, describes the processes and consequences of addiction and how we deal with it in society, which is by taking a punitive approach. He begins by describing how a rat alone in a cage, when given the choice between a water bottle laced with heroin or a drug-free water bottle, will always choose the drug water and eventually die. However, rats placed in cages together with other rats (along with other stimuli like food and toys) will almost never choose the water bottle with drugs. He then likens this rat phenomenon to addicts lacking a sense of community and goes on to advocate not for individual recovery but social recovery.

I found this really applicable to a quote toward the end of Socialist Alteration when Vygotsky cites Marx as saying, “Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions: only in community therefore, is personal freedom possible.” Hari discusses in his TED talk that we are the loneliest society that’s ever existed, which is probably true, as Manisha highlights at the end of her blog post. It is an interesting juxtaposition, in that we are technologically and physically able to be more connected than ever before, yet only seem to be more and more isolated, the consequences of which are manifesting in dire ways.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ZPD vs. Scaffolding

Reading Wood et al.'s (1976) original article in which they introduce the metaphor of "scaffolding" really makes clear how different this is from ZPD.  There is no collaboration (perhaps a better word is co-operation) between the expert and the child... the expert guides the child's actions through controlling their immediate problem-solving experience. The model of scaffolding assumes that the expert is, in a sense, all-knowing in relation to the problem and is not an active participant in the actions of problem-solving.  Vygotsky's theory really seems to require a much more dynamic social interaction or series of social interactions. I also question to what extent a tutor operating in this way can engage with a child's everyday and scientific concepts in a meaningful way. Having read Smagorinsky's (2018) article once more, it is hard not to be convinced of his position. He confirmed with Anna Stetsenko at CUNY (who earned her PhD in Psychology at Mosco...
Read more

Can scientific concepts be taught as everyday concepts? My middle school physics teacher

Image
I began reading the chapter on the development of scientific concepts and it was interesting to see how Vygotsky differentiates between scientific and everyday concepts. Scientific concepts are simply learned or received in completed form (most commonly introduced as a term along with its definition) which in turn leads to understanding, learning, and comprehension. Whereas, everyday concepts do not have a formal definition, need not be universal but still helps us understand the functioning of the society and the world in which we live. When reflecting on all this, I was reminded of a middle school physics teacher I had (Sadly, we had her only for one year), who would not introduce new concepts as 'words' and definitions but instead, would begin class with a demonstration. One of which is depicted below. I so vividly remember her explaining inertia through this method:                                 ...
Read more

Learning from teaching vs Impactful experiences from child’s play

I remember very little about my past schooling and I am not sure if it is because I have this belief that we should spend little time reminiscing on the past and looking towards the future or is it that my classroom experiences were all “traditional” and are not stored in my active memory. The latter would seem applicable as I really do remember more key events from my “play times” but very few from the formal school settings. Lev S. Vygotsky states: “In play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form; in play it is as though the child were trying to jump above the level of his normal behavior” (1967, 16). The interpretation of the above quote can and has taken many forms but I do not agree that children learn more from play and interactions with their peers than in a formal environment. My ...
Read more