Complexes are VISIBLE and CONCRETE

[kellogg]

(Data EIGHT: What are they doing?)

FT: I think it's afternoon.

KT: Do you think it's afternoon?

FT: Yes.

KT: Why?

FT: I think they are leaving school.

KT: They are leaving school?

FT: In the afternoon. And it's really hot.

KT와 FT는 현재 오후이며, 학교를 떠나 집으로 갈 시간임을 대화를 통해 밝히고 있다. 또한 더워서 집에 간다는 이야기를 하며 앞으로 이어질 Let's go swimming에 대한 힌트를 주고 있다.

Good. Ms. Hong simply UPTAKES the data and puts it into indirect speech, DESCRIBING what KT and FT are doing.

But remember we are supposed to be paying attention to the STUDENT data. This is only TEACHER data. So it’s not really relevant to your answer unless you say something about how it might influence the children’s THINKING.

Now, yesterday, Ms. Ha-ha Smile got into a bit of trouble. She knows that complexes are really based on groupings of OBJECTS. That is particularly true of complex-collections (e.g. “spoon”, “fork”, “knife”, etc.

Consider THIS:

  Jinho and Peter.docx

a)     T: Look! This is a KNIFE. And this is a fork. And this is a spoon. And this is cake.

b)    T: Look! This is a KNIFE. Now, is it Peter’s knife or Jinho’s knife? What about this fork? What about the chopsticks? That’s right—Jinho’s. How do you know? Why?

 Now, BOTH of these are teacher talk. NEITHER one is student talk. But one of them suggests a complex, an the other suggests a concept (roughly, “Asian” vs. “non-Asian”). Why?

I think there are two things to notice about the concept (and also the potential concept). They both start with NOT.

a)    It’s NOT visual. It’s NOT visible. It’s NOT graphic. We cannot see the “Asian-ness” of the chopsticks or the “non-Asian-ness” of the knife and fork. It’s something we create with WORDS.

b)    It’s NOT a noun. It’s not even a property of a quality of a noun (e.g. color, shape, size). It’s a RELATIONSHIP, e.g. “although”, “because”, or even “not”, and above all it is a process of thinking about that relationship.

Now, Ha-Ha got into some trouble because she said that “hiking”, “camping”, “swimming” are a collection complex (roughly, “a collection of things to do after school”.

Are they REALLY? Are they visible? You can see someone who is hiking (the same way you can see someone who is Asian) but can you see the “hiking”—without the person? Are they nouns? For example, do we use the ARTICLE? (Do we say “a hiking” or “a swimming”?).

Aren’t they really PROCESSES? And isn’t the problem of differentiating the abstract concept of “doing” into “leaving school” and “going swimming” also a matter of process?

KT: (point to the picture) This is their school?

S: Yes.

KT: Is that ?

S: Yeah.

KT: This building ... is their school?

S: Yes.

KT: Maybe.

여기서 학생은 모든 빌딩을 다 학교라고 여기고 있다. 이는 학생의 주관적인 판단이며, 대상을 하나의 더미로 판단하는 heap 의 일환으로 볼 수 있다. 모든 빌딩을 다 학교라고 대답하는 학생에게 교사는 'maybe' 라는 말을 통해 학생이 빌딩들을 다시 구분해볼 수 있도록 유도한다.  

Hongkong says that the decision to identify the building as a school is purely subjective, and that it is the judgment of the student.

I can’t see that! It seems to me that the building IS a school. Jinho, Ann, and Joon are schoolmates. They are carrying their school bags. So there are objective reasons to think it is a school.

I also think that it’s NOT the judgment of the student. The student simply says “Yes. Yeah. Yes.” The thinking here is ENTIRELY done by the teacher, and the student goes along with it. So I can’t really see that this is a syncretic heap at all.

Remember that Vygotsky is working with ideas about child psychology from Piaget—the term “syncretism” is straight from Piaget. Now, for Piaget syncretism means “anything goes (so long as I say so)”. Syncretism is a direct reflection of the autism, the egocntrism, the whims and wishes of the child.

Vygotsky’s idea of syncretism is a little different. Vygotsky sees syncretic heaps as being created by the ACTION of the CHILD on OBJECTS. When the child messes up his room, when the child jumbles up things in his pockets, when the child throws things together and takes them apart, the child is ACTING on objects and creating syncretic heaps.

That happens in the experiment with the blocks, of course. But is it happening here? Isn’t what is happening here ENTIRELY controlled by the teacher?

 S: They go home.

이에 학생은 빌딩을 학교와 집으로 구분하고 있다. 이는 복합체에 속하며, 복합체를 객관적인 특징이 아닌 '하교 후 집으로 가는 모습'이라는 기능을 보고 구분하였기 때문에 수집체 복합체라고 생각한다.

The child says “They go home”. Now, this is the first REAL evidence we have of STUDENT thinking. It’s clearly NOT influenced by the teacher, because it actually goes against what the teacher wants to hear (the tense is wrong and the destination is probably also wrong, because Jinho has a piano lesson and Ann and Joon want to go swimming).

“Home” is an interesting word. It’s a word, of course, and that means it’s a symbol.

a) It CAN be a concept: it can mean “domestic”, “Korean”, or a house which is emotionally saturated with family and coziness, and it can mean this independently of concrete experience.

b) It can ALSO be a complex: Jinho has a home, and Ann has a home, and Joon has another home, and the three things are related by concrete resemblances: in each, the child has parents, a room, etc.

c) AND it can be a syncretic heap: “Any place I hang my hat is home”. “Wherever I go is home”.

Hongkong suggests that the kids are thinking of b). I think she’s right. But what kind of complex? Is it associative, or collective, or chain, or diffuse?

KT: They are ... ?

S: Go home.

KT: Yeah, leaving school ... to go back ...

S: home.

KT: home ... to go home.

교사는 학생들이 학교를 떠나 가는 곳 = 집 이라는 의미로 집과 학교를 구분하는 학생과 대화의 의미를 바르게 파악하였고 상호작용하고 있다.

Yes, I think the teacher is TRYING to build a bridge between “leaving school” and “going back home”. There’s a good reason for this: the communicative function is “making plans for the afternoon”. But you only do this when you are leaving school, not when you have gone home for good. So it’s in the interest of the teacher to introduce the idea of “to go back home”. Doing something to do something else. But will the kids pick it up?

S: They go 찜질방.

처음엔 갑자기 찜질방이 왜 나왔을까...라는 생각을 하였는데 어떻게 보면 이 찜질방이라는 말이 내가 they go home에서 home과 school의 분류를 수집체 복합체로 분류했던 것에 한번 더 힘을 실어줄 단서가 될 수 있다는 생각이 들었다.

 수집체 복합체는 혼합적 이미지(연합적 복합체)와 달라 대표적 대상으로부터 형성되지 않고 대상들이 서로 다르다. 즉 옷을 입을 때 셔츠, 바지, 양말이 다 있어야 하는 것과 같은 의미이다. 학생이 그냥 학교와 집을 그 모습이나 색깔, 크기등으로 비교했다면 그 두 분류는 연합적 복합체가 될 수 있었겠지만, 학생은 학교를 <학교> / <집,찜질방>  으로 분류를 하였다. 이는 "학교=공부하는 곳, 학생들이 오전에 머무는 곳" 이고 "집,찜질방,(pc방, 수영장)= 방과후 학생들이 갈 수 있는 곳" 으로 분류하였다고 볼 수 있지 않을까싶다. 그렇다면 이 분류는 기능에 의한 분류, 대상들이 서로 다르지만 기능적 보완성때문에 구체적 그룹으로 나눈 하나의 수집체 복합체로 해석할 수 있을 것이다.

Yes, it’s a CRAZY answer! First of all, kids don’t go to the sauna by themselves; they go with their parents (where will Ann go?)

Now, on the face of it, this CRAZY answer is just one of a number of DISPREFERRED answers that we’ve seen in ALL the data (e.g. “Ocean World”, “air conditioner”, and of course “NO!”).

When children give CRAZY answers, there is a strong element of syncretism (that is subjectivity). But these are older children, and their syncretism is never pure; it’s always PARTLY a response to what the teacher is doing.

The teacher IS trying to get to the idea of planning after school activities. This is actually a pretty good opening.

I think that I disagree with both Hongkong and Ha-ha about whether activities (e.g. “going to the sauna”, “hiking”, “camping”) are really complexes. It seems to me that in order for them to be grouped together they CANNOT be a) visual or b) things. They have to be AT LEAST potential concepts.