Development
"Zone of Proximal Development",
Lev Vygotsky, 1896 - 1934.
-
"A second aspect of Vygotsky's theory is the idea that the potential for cognitive depends upon the "zone of " (ZPD): a level of attained when children engage in social behavior. Full of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone." (Ref. 9)
-
"One essential tenet in Vygotsky's theory is the notion of the existence of what he called the "zone of ". Zone of is the difference between the child's capacity to solve problems on his own, and his capacity to solve them with assistance. In other words, the actual developmental level refers to all the functions and activities that a child can perform on his own, independently without the help of anyone else. On the other hand, the zone of includes all the functions and activities that a child or a learner can perform only with the assistance of someone else. The person in this scaffolding process, providing non-intrusive intervention, could be an adult (parent, teacher, caretaker, language instructor) or another peer who has already mastered that particular function." (Ref. 10)
Free Association
20-03-2003
I think this is a refreshing idea, in spite of its age. People are easily judged on their actual developmental level. We are pinned upon a diploma, or a social status, and that's it. I am never asked what my intentions are for the future, which of my possibilities I not yet have developed, what could be my next choice.
This in itself is frustrating enough, but what if the zone of proximal development is thrown away? I experienced it several times, and it tastes of something quite strange.
In my fifth school-year, (when I was 10), I made a picture of a card, drawn and painted quite accurately, on assignment of the teacher. He takes a look at the affair, gives me 10/10 and throws it on the heap, frowning. As if he thinks: "I should give a 10, but it could have been made by his big sister just as well". And there was no sister in the game, I didn't even have any at that time.
In the second year of secondary school, (14 year old), I am very interested in biology. I have my own small microscope at home, and I try to make photos with it. After having tried out a lot of arrangements I succeed to project some pictures directly on photographic paper in the dark room, with a shielded light bulb shining through the scope as if it were a projector. Proud as a peacock I show them (the very same as those depicted here) to the teacher of 'physics-chemistry-biology'. He looks and says: "To make pictures with a microscope you need as special sort of camera, placed on the microscope; the arrangement you explained does not yield a real image, so the pictures are impossible"; exit photos.
The situation reminds me of the zone of proximal destruction.
Dream
20-03-2003
Concerning the zone of proximal destruction I had the following (dirty) dream.
- I am in bed, and next to me lies down Marcel, a heavyweight lawyer of 120 kg. For several reasons I have my reasons to hate him, but all the way I ask him: "Actually, how do you feel"? He tells he has eaten to much, gets up en runs to the lavabo to vomit. I fear a terrible mess, but only a little bit comes out.
- I am sitting on the toilet, with my trousers on, and must defecate, shit! I become angry, and want to get my shoes off, but I don't wear socks and they stick to my feet. Me terribly angry. I run to an other room, and there all sorts of things are scattered on the floor, from Lieve. She is reading there and writing and working, and she listens to soft music. I get my trousers off after all, and now it will come, I think. There is some shit between my trousers and my underpants.
Free Association
20-03-2003
Being angry at other people is forbidden, even if I had been had from start to finish. No, and what's more, I ought to be interested, and clean up the puke without a murmur. It reminds me of a genuine fight, when I was about 12 years old. One of the (very bad) boys from the neighborhood had hit the head of an other (not too good) boy with a shovel. There was a gush of blood, and I yelled: "Goddamned!" and ran home. Puffing and blowing I told everything to my mother. "And you gave curses too!" she shouted; slap, on my cheek. Thou shall not swear.
Sister Amata, in the kindergarten, said, over my head to my mother, that I was the sweetest of her class. Should they all be like that... Of course, being kind also has its price.
When the sister had drown something on the blackboard which we had to reproduce (copy!), then I drew it as perfect as possible (see the card on top of the page), and so it took much more time than for the others who were not so kind. Those who were ready, could play with the blocks.
I never came to the building blocks, and got it in a way, for I ought to hurry op a little bit, there. They looked somewhat like the cubes and sticks depicted here.
In the second nursery class I had to wear a pink apron, with buttons on the backside which I could not reach myself, and I found I looked like a girl. One of the big guys in the class wore a gray duster, and I wanted one like that. My mother did not see the necessity of it, and besides, said it was vulgar.
In the first nursery year I got accompanied on my way to school by Magda, a somewhat older girl, because it was to dangerous to walk to school alone. Once I was not in the mood to go to school, and just before entering, through a small green door in the wall around the playground, I bit in her arm, and ran back home. But yes, they captured me to be exposed against the surrounding wall. I can still see myself standing there, with a scolding nun and half a circle of spectators around me. The weather was beautiful, and the sun shining.
The fat lawyer throws up a little bit into the lavabo..., and no associations are likely to come up into my mind. I should say, he is about to explode by eating up to much, but it is not like that. He does not explode at all. Perhaps he hasn't even had enough yet. As a child I should never eat to much, because then I would throw up, or feel sick. For instance, just have a small bite of chocolate. If I took more, then my ass would block up. Cocoa also was very bad, especially just before or after dinner, for it would stick in my throat. Later on I suffered from my liver, they said, and so I often felt dizzy. Reminding all this really makes me sick. Nothing was wrong with me, neither my stomach nor my liver showed any failure, but it looks as if they were waiting for it.
Speaking about waiting for it. The lawyer in my dream, the bad one after all, has my sympathy, because my little bad boy is still near to my heart, my personal villain let's say, who has been imprisoned by the grown-ups. Or the chance to be normal, instead of nice and sweet.
The dream-fragment with the shit of course is a horse of a different color. My father often told a joke about a guy coming home with shit in his trousers, between his underpants and his pants. He had to explain the affair to his wife, because she found the mess impossibly could be his. From whom is this? ... I never understood it very well, but heard it several times. My father laughed every time.
11 Years. I ask my mother and aunt Bolly, whether I can go with them for shopping. They wanted to go to the 'store' and I wondered what that might be. My dear aunt said: "If we want a pain in the ass, then we shit on a breadboard, and drag it on a piece of string behind our back". There. In this way I was less than shit behind their asses, and could stay at home.
The rage coming up in my dream is the one I felt when I couldn't manage a construction with my meccano. I was terribly frustrated, ant threw the crane on the floor, roaring like a lion. It was not a small bird, but a small tower-crane, which I made in my, for then, own room. Between my 13 and 14 year, I also had a personal room, but not for long. It was the rear room upstairs in the house at Keuvelhoek.
I always dreamed of a big crane, looking like the one on the picture here, but hadn't spare parts enough, and just a small motor which I had to wind up again and again to do its work. I was very frustrated about it, and I once got a box on my ears, by my father, under the command of my mother, because I did not stop nagging for it. I also remember I once got a silver coin of 100 Franks from my father 'to save up for spare parts', and that was not under the command of my mother. She was very surprised about it, as if it was a wonder of the world, or dad having won the lotto, or perhaps he got sick of his money.
Now the rage comes up, because I can't get off my shoes. In the past they always said I had sweaty feet, as if I was the only one in the world suffering from this 'disease'. My father must have had the same symptom, in the past, but he got rid of it by putting newsprint in his shoes, for a couple of weeks or months. My grandma learned me to be toilet-trained, by holding me above newsprint until I did it on the paper - but this time I only heard of it and don't remember it myself.
My grandma, granny as she always was called, loved me. She even held me patiently to learn me important things. My father loved me too, but he feared my mother, who found I wasn't worth a dime. When pa gave me something, then she didn't like it. He even invited me once to clamber onto his lap (when I was about 10), and then she asked him if he promised me something, or the other way round. So no clambering laps then, with the label of something dirty, like homo or pedophile on top of it.
I long to read and write snugly, with a little bit of music, as with granny or Lieve, and I have sweaty feet, and shit at an impossible place, and I am angry.
-
Card :
http://www.caerllion.net/archive/huxtables/village.htm -
Little house, children's drawing :
(http://www.math.sc.edu/~griggs/Malia/msg.html) -
Blocks and sticks :
http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/global/david/dwe002/
dwe00251.htm -
Apron :
http://www.anokhiusa.com/
(2002_q2_clothing/product_109.html) -
Teeth :
http://www.shelties.nl/ (gezond/index.html) -
Meccano :
http://www.tamuseum.org.nz/education.htm -
Vygotsky :
http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html -
Vygotsky :
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html -
Vygotsky :
(http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~lgrunwa2/une/
psychology_theory/180notes/vygotski.html)
e-Mail: Home Page
Copyright © 2003 A. Syberg