Blogging Chapter Six, Section Two: Homework for AFTER the Midterm

( K-Dragon reminds LSV of an unsolved problem from Chapter Five!)   K-Dragon: It seems to me there’s a contradiction. On the one hand, adolescents tend to use concepts in practical, even visual situations rather than in abstract definitions. On the other they find it very difficult to apply abstract concepts learnt in the classroom to real life.   LSV: Yes, it’s a terrible contradiction for the child; a genetic contradiction, not a logical one. In our day this was called the “inert knowledge” problem by Whitehead. The idea was that the knowledge the child gets in the classroom stays in the classroom; the child can’t use it outside school.   K-Dragon: And in our day it’s called the “encapsulation” problem by Engeström. The idea is that there is a Chinese Wall, not between different kinds of concepts but between learning concepts in the classroom and using them in real life. In English teaching we just say that the child has linguistic competence but hasn’t developed communicative competence.   LSV: Really? I think I would say just the opposite: the child has some communicative competence but hasn’t developed a particular linguistic competence, that is, usable foreign language concepts.   Handyman: But for the most part the foreign language concepts are the same as the native language ones, aren’t they?   LSV: Only when we are referring to seen objects and known ideas. But as soon as we start talking about things we can’t see or hear, as soon as we talk about the past and the future, as soon as we talk about generalizations and abstractions, they can be very different.   Mirror:  So COMPLEXES are culture bound. And CONCEPTS are universal?   LSV: Complexes are certainly culture bound. And concepts are bound to a somewhat more universal culture.   K-Dragon: But I think your “communicative competence” problem is not just a problem of SPEECH. It’s a problem of THINKING: of applying foreign language concepts, which are qualitatively different from native language concepts, to everyday life.   Superman: Everyday life is Korean life. The child has no motive for using English concepts, so the child doesn’t.   K-Dragon: It’s not that different from other problems of elementary teaching; it’s no different from teaching about the phases of the moon in the classroom, and then when they actually see a half moon in the sky, they think it’s because of the earth’s shadow.   LSV: This contradiction is easy to explain when we distinguish between everyday concepts, which are initially concrete and only later abstract, and academic concepts, which are initially abstract and only later concrete.   Kitty: But why are the two kinds of concepts so different?   LSV: That’s what we’re going to find out in this section. Let’s ask Piaget to help us.   K-Dragon: I have a better idea. Let’s ask Kitty.   Kitty: Sorry. I can’t do my homework because I am going to Yangpyeon with my friends. I can’t do my midterm because I am going to Japan.   LSV: Now, Piaget says the problem is that young people can use concepts like “because” when they say things like “I can’t do my homework because I am going to Yangpyeon”.   K-Dragon: But they can’t explain what the word “because” means. If you ask them they will say something like “It means she is going to Yangpyeon” or “It means that she cannot do her homework”.   Chokey: Yes, but that’s for THIRD graders. Kitty knows perfectly well what “because” means here.   Mirror: But let’s say a Korean teenager learns all about the 24 hour day and is even be able to calculate time zones when making telephone calls. He still cannot explain the concept of the international dateline over the phone to a friend in another country except in everyday, almost complexive, terms (e.g. “It’s tomorrow over here, and yesterday over there”).   LSV: He can do it perfectly well, but he can’t explain how he does it. He has no conscious awareness of HOW he is thinking, because he is still only focused on WHAT he is thinking.   Superman: Like tying your shoe. You pay attention to the knot product and not to the knotting process.   LSV: You see, to REALLY study the “inert knowledge problem”, the “encapsulation problem”, or the “communicative competence” problem, we have to have a critical attitude EVEN towards the yard stick we are using to measure the child’s competence.   Mirror: A yardstick?   LSV: It’s a big yardstick: it only has a couple of marks. First, the child cannot use what we teach him. Second, the child CAN use what we teach him, but cannot explain how. Third, the child can use what we teach him AND can explain how. Those are all three DIFFERENT kinds of competence, and we need a measuring stick that that can distinguish between them.   K-Dragon: But Piaget DOES distinguish between them, doesn’t he?   LSV: Yes, he does.   Mirror: And he explains WHY they are different, doesn’t he?   LSV:  Well, not exactly. Claparède offers TWO laws, and Piaget uses them as explanations. Right, Handyman? What’s the FIRST law?   Handyman: ….   Mirror: How does he know this? Are there any experiments that show this?   Handyman: …. Chokey: So let me get this straight. The child notices DIFFERENCES before the child notices SIMILARITIES. And for Claparède that means that the conscious awareness arises from DIFFICULTIES and not from SMOOTH adaptations.   Handyman:…   Mirror: That’s pretty obvious. I mean, you only need instructions when you get lost, right? And when you ask somebody “How are you?” and they say “fine” you don’t ask why. But if they say “terrible!” then you can ask why. So the first law makes sense.   LSV: Yes, but it just makes COMMON sense. It just tells us WHY. It doesn’t tell us HOW. Earlier we saw that Piaget took three steps backward when he established the independence of child thinking from adult thinking, when he set up a wall between the development of child concepts and academic concepts, and when he attributed all maturation to “socialization”. But this is an even BIGGER step backwards.   Handyman: Why?   LSV: Because it implies that a need somehow magically creates the means by which it can be satisfied. Birds grow wings. WHY do they grow them? Because they need to fly. But that doesn’t tell us HOW wings evolved. Even Piaget says it’s a FUNCTIONAL explanation. But the STRUCTURAL problem remains.   Mirror: So what’s the SECOND law?   Handyman: …   Chokey: So let me get that one straight. When the child achieves conscious awareness, the child puts it into WORDS. Right?   Handyman: …   Mirror: That seems obvious too. The child ACTS before the child can actually SAY what he is doing. Every teacher knows it’s easier to DO a game with kids than to explain it to them.   LSV: Yes, but it’s really TOO obvious. It makes the achievement of conscious awareness the same as any other kind of adaptation, the same as eating when you are hungry and drinking when you are thirsty.   K-Dragon: But conscious awareness isn’t the same as other adaptations. It doesn’t feel the same. It feels different!   LSV: Isn’t it possible that we REALLY become conscious of differences before we become conscious of similarity because noticing DIFFERENCES just requires perception, while noting SIMILARITIES requires generalization?   Mirror: …   LSV: From our experiments getting children to describe photographs, we know that the child finds it easier to ACT than to talk about THINGS. But we also know that the child who is describing a photograph finds it easier to talk about THINGS than to talk about ACTS. The “law of displacement” is a reasonable explanation, or at least a description, of the former. But can it explain the latter?   Mirror: …   Hongkong: Wait a minute. You say that Claparède and Piaget think that development is really an adaptation to difficulty, a displacement of difficulties from the plane of action to the plane of thinking. But what does all that stuff mean for TEACHING?   LSV: I’m afraid it means a rather boring and cruel method of teaching! Every difficulty in action is displaced onto the plane of thinking by bumping up against some OBSTACLE. The child’s best teachers are his biggest obstacles, and the bumps on his head are the true intellectual records of his bumping his head against the wall.    Hongkong: But doesn’t it work for teaching reading and writing? I mean, the child displaces the action of speaking to the action of thinking, and that’s what produces written speech. That’s why children learn to read and write after they learn to speak and listen.   Mirror: …   LSV: We’ll talk about the fundamental DIFFERENCES between written speech and spoken speech later. I think that in a way they are just as fundamental as the differences between spoken speech and inner speech. For the moment, the question we have to ask is much easier: Do the two laws really explain HOW children become conscious of their own thought processes? Can they explain HOW children go from non-conscious concepts to conscious, deliberate, and completely controlled concepts?   Mirror: …   LSV: Right. At the very most, the first law explains why in the absence of need for consciousness there is an absence of consciousness. But that DOESN’T explain why when there is a NEED for consciousness, consciousness suddenly appears. And at the very most, the second law explains why concepts are not conscious at school age. But that DOESN’T explain how…   Mirror: …   LSV: So I say that the two laws do not actually answer the question. They simply ask it. Or rather, they try to answer the FUNCTIONAL question, the question of WHY the child’s concepts are not conscious, but they do not even ask the STRUCTURAL question, the question of HOW the child’s concepts can become conscious.   Hongkong: I notice you say they TRY to answer the functional question. Don’t you think that Claparède and Piaget have really answered it?   LSV: No, I don’t. I think that the purely functionalist explanation is in the end a pre-formist explanation. Birds grow wings because they need to fly. And so the need for flying somehow has in it the pre-formed solution of wings. In the same way, Piaget’s explanation for the unconsciousness of the child’s concepts is a pre-formist explanation.   Hongkong: How so?   LSV: Children are unconscious because they are self-centred and egocentric. And they are egocentric because they were solipsistic. All of Piaget’s explanations lie in the past. But this backward looking view can have no real support in a theory of development, because development is forward looking.   Hongkong: Aren’t there experiments supporting it?   LSV: Our experiments actually REFUTE it. But before we go into that, we need to look at Piaget’s explanation for how the child’s unconscious concepts become conscious. As I said, the explanation for their unconsciousness is all INSIDE the child, and it’s all in the child’s PAST. So you can probably imagine how Piaget has to explain the seizure of consciousness, right?   Hongkong: …   LSV: Right! Like a snake shedding his skin! But there’s a contradiction here, really. On the one hand, Piaget says that the child’s concepts are unconscious. And then on the other it’s precisely at this age that they become conscious.   Hongkong: .,…?   LSV: Well, we need to define what we mean by a conscious function. What I mean is that it has become VOLUNTARY. I mean that the child can use the function or not use it. That the child is able to control it, instead of simply using it in response to something in the environment.   Hongkong: For example?   LSV: For example, very young children HAVE to look at things that go by, and they HAVE to jump when they hear noises. But older children can choose not to look at something and they can control their tears and fears. In the same way, children learn to control their attention and learn to control their memory. Now, you are a teacher. At what age does this happen?   Hongkong: …   LSV: Right. Now, the problem is that Piaget says—and I agree with him—that the child can control his attention, and even his memory, but not his concepts. That is, the child is not able to form, deliberately and without any response to the environment, a completely new concept. Why not? All the functions have become thoughtful, except for thinking. Why not thinking? All the mental actions of the child are intellectualized, except for intellect. Why?   Hongkong: Let me guess. It has something to do with the inter-functional connections. Right?   LSV: I think so. You see, at bottom the idea that consciousness represents a unified whole is not a new idea for psychology. To be exact, it is as old as psychology itself! Memory implies the use of attention, perception, and understanding. Perception includes attention, recognition (that is, memory) and comprehension. But in the old psychology, and even in the new, the idea of a unified consciousness…wait a minute. Haven’t I said this before?   Hongkong: ….   Chokey: Yes, but I still don’t understand it. How does this explain what we want to know? How does it explain why all the functions of intellect are intellectualized, but intellect itself is not yet conscious?   LSV: Well, the old psychology said that the LINKS BETWEEN FUNCTIONS do not change. They are always there. But suppose they are NOT always there? Suppose, for example, speech and thinking have separate roots?   Chokey: ….   LSV: Right. Now suppose the same thing is true of perception and memory? Suppose perception develops first, in infancy, while memory doesn’t develop until the child has a bit more to remember.   Chokey: …   LSV: Good. Now the child arrives in school. The functions of attention, perception, and memory are already pretty well developed. But what about the inter-functional links? Are they equally well developed?   Chokey: …   LSV: Exactly. Remember that what the child brings to school are not concepts. They are the functional equivalents of concepts, but they are not the structural equivalents of concepts.   Chokey: You mean the structures we talked about in Chapter Five? Syncretic heaps, and complexes? Associations, collections, chains, diffuse complexes, and pseudoconcepts?   LSV: Let’s call them all “preconcepts”.  They are structures based on generalized attention, generalized perception, generalized representation (that is, memory). The main thing is to realize that the child isn’t actually using concepts yet. So it would be pretty amazing if the child could consciously understand concept formation!   Chokey: But the child NEEDS concepts. Reading, writing, mathematics—all of that is based on conceptual thinking.   LSV: Right. But remember, the need for flying is not what makes the birds’ wings grow. The first birds apparently used wings for running along the ground, or for cooling themselves, or perhaps even for swimming. It took many millions of years to evolve wings that would actually make the bird fly.   Chokey: That’s very interesting. But what does that have to do with concept formation?   LSV: Well, the child’s generalized representations are not concepts. They are nothing more than family names. The child uses them to point to stuff, and to name stuff, but not to create systems for defining, classifying, and exemplifying. That lasts for a long time.   Chokey: So it’s not surprising that the child is not conscious of using concepts. As far as the child is concerned, he’s not using concepts at all. He’s just pointing to things and naming them.   LSV: Yes. And now that we have something to put in their place, we are in a position to reject the explanations that are offered by Claparède and Piaget. We can study how the child becomes conscious of functions like attention and memory and we can guess how the child becomes conscious of and masters the formation of concepts.   Chokey: Wait. I know that you defined “conscious” before. You said it meant control and volition and choice. But now you seem to be using “conscious” to mean two completely different things.   LSV: Really?   Chokey: Well, yes. You mean “be aware of something”. But you also mean something like “master and be expert at something”.   LSV: Isn’t that the same thing?   Chokey: Well, not necessarily. It’s not like that in foreign language learning, for example.   LSV: Why not?   Chokey: …   LSV: Well, I think the term “unconscious” is pretty slippery. It’s slippery to begin with, and it’s even more slippery when Piaget adds ideas about the subconscious mind to it. But I think that Piaget doesn’t really believe that the child is NON-conscious, except when the child is asleep. I think that what Piaget believes is that the child is really unconscious, in other words, the child is MORE conscious of SOME things and LESS conscious of others.   Chokey: For example?   LSV: Well, for example, when Kitty says “I can’t do my homework because I am going to Yangpyeon with my friends” or “I can’t do my midterm because I am going to Japan”, she is very conscious of the homework and of Yangpyeon, but she’s not very conscious of the word “because” or the word “can”.  Now, think of a child tying his shoe. What is the child MORE conscious of? What is the child LESS conscious of?   Chokey: …   LSV: Right! Suppose we ask the child “Do you know your name?” What is the child MORE conscious of? What is the child LESS conscious of?   Chokey: …   LSV: And suppose we use a picture and we say “Do you know what this is?”   Chokey: …   LSV: Now, you notice that all these examples have two things in common. On the one hand, there are generalized representations: an outing, a knot, a name, a picture. On the other, there are abstractions like “can”, “because”, and “know”. Which is the child more conscious of and why?   Chokey: …   Superman: Wait a minute. Suppose we ask the child to finish a sentence like “The man fell off his bicycle because…” Isn’t the child ALWAYS going to focus attention on the man and his bicycle?   LSV: Right. But suppose we give the child a sentence like “Socialism is possible in the USSR because…” Now, where will the child put his or her attention?   Superman:….   LSV: Piaget’s research shows us that insight and reflection and  introspection doesn’t really get going until school age. The child just thinks; the child doesn’t think about thinking. But when we start to study how the child thinks at school age we notice something very interesting.   Superman: …?   LSV: Well, we notice something quite similar to what we observed in early childhood with perception. In early childhood, perception becomes VERBALIZED. The very young child walks into a room and sees a large steel object with a glass face and two hands. He doesn’t see that it’s a clock, because he doesn’t know what a clock is. But the older child walks into the room and does not see the steel, the glass face, or the hands. He sees a clock. His perception has become verbalized.   Superman: ….?   LSV: Yes, that’s what happens with the child’s insight and reflection and introspection. It becomes verbalized. Just as the preschooler can tell you what time it is, the school child can tell you something about what he is feeling and what he is thinking. We get generalizations like “happy” and “angry” and so on.   Superman: But you said that conscious awareness has something to do with control and mastery, not just awareness.   LSV: Right. The child is not simply generalizing about his or her thoughts and feelings. The child is also ABSTRACTING. For example, the child remembers an outing to Caribbean Bay and not one to Ocean World. The child remembers exciting things and not boring things. So the child is learning to choose, and master, his memory and his feelings.   Superman: You said that seeing differently means playing differently in chess. Is that also true in thinking and feeling?   LSV: I don’t know. Perhaps when the child learns that he can remember exciting things and not boring things, the child can also remember happy things and not sad ones, and this makes it possible to control anger or fear. What do you think?   Superman: …   LSV: I think I agree. But it seems to me that in some ways it’s not so easy to control anger or fear. In some ways it’s a lot easier to control a scientific concept.   Superman: …?   LSV: Well, the scientific concept is part of a hierarchical system. And a hierarchical system always means CHOICE.   Superman: Like “nonliving thing vs. living thing”, “plant vs. animal”, “invertebrate vs. vertebrate”, “mammal, reptile, amphibian, etc.”   LSV: Right. Now, I said that mastery was conscious mastery, control, being able to choose without simply reacting to stimuli. It seems to me that having a hierarchical SYSTEM of concepts is a very important part of that.   Superman: Actually, English teaching is like this too.   LSV: Really? How?   Superman: Well, we do teach a lot of fixed phrases. But we also teach a lot of combinations, like “Let’s go (hiking, fishing, camping)” or “I’m happy/sad/hungry/angry”. And in order to go from fixed phrases to creative combinations, the child has to have the idea of choice.   LSV: Yes, that’s a kind of system. I think that foreign language learning is always more SYSTEMATIC that way. That is how it frees the child’s system of meaning-making from the immediate environment and makes it much more accessible to imagination. I think the same thing is true of scientific concepts. They offer choice, because the child is free of the immediate environment.   Superman: That’s not what Piaget says! A lot of Piagetian science teaching involves hands-on experience.   LSV: Well I think there are TWO things that are worth remembering here about Piaget. But I’m afraid I have to leave now. I have a lecture to give in Kharkov.   Superman: Wait!   Mirror: What was the first one?   Superman: I don’t know. Let’s look in the book. I think it’s around 6-2-38. Yes, here it is. The first thing is …   Chokey: So the child’s spontaneous concepts are not conscious? Always?   Superman: …   Hongkong: And what’s the second thing to remember?   Superman: …   Mirror: But that takes us right back to the points that LSV was making about Piaget in the last section. Piaget insists that only the child’s spontaneous comments represent child thinking.       Handyman: Right. As soon as you introduce a system, it’s not an example of child thinking. And the lack of a system explains almost perfectly all of the syncretic thinking that Piaget observes: the lack of systematicity, the incoherence, the inability to deduce examples from general statements, the acceptance of contradictions, juxtaposing things instead of trying to synthesize them, and refusing to analyze. All of that has to do with the lack of a system.   Hongkong: When you say a “system”, it sounds like you mean a kind of “family tree”.   Mirror: Yes, except that the “ancestors” are really GENERAL concepts and not concrete individuals. “Living things” and then “plants” and then “trees”, instead of “grandfather”, “father”, “son”.   Chokey: Wait a minute. I thought that children learn GENERAL words first. THEN they learn specific examples. So they learn “flower”. And THEN they learn “rose”. Doesn’t that mean that the child ALWAYS has a system?   Superman: ….   Hongkong: So how does having a system allow the child to be consciously aware? How does knowing about things like “nouns” and “verbs” help the child to choose?   Superman: …   Mirror: So to resolve the whole puzzle, we need a piece that Piaget rejected at the very beginning.   Handyman: What piece?   Superman: ….