RE: [xmca] Genealogy & the Evolution of CHAT from J.Bruner

Bella, thank you! Wow!

Most of all, I'm happy to hear that he's in good health, on his way out
to dinner, in touch with a lot of his old students, and doing his email!

This makes me sit back and look out the window and try to count on my
fingers the other teachers I have had who have sent me off on new roads.
Even three or four is a lot.

Helena

Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
504 E. Armory, Room 227
Champaign, IL 61821
Phone: 217-244-4095
hworthen@uiuc.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of bella kotik
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 2:04 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Genealogy & the Evolution of CHAT from J.Bruner

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jerome Bruner <jsb3@i5.nyu.edu>
Date: Sep 14, 2007 12:37 AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: [xmca] Genealogy & the Evolution of CHAT
To: bella kotik <bella.kotik@gmail.com>

That amazing! Yes, I remember my efforts back then to get Vygotsky
introduced into American psychology, and of course, Ray Bauer did a
marvelous job of introducing him to the Russia specialists at Harvard
(who
knew nothing about psychology).

And yes, I also remember Helena, though only vaguely. I shall e-mail her
(now that I have her address). Funny, I keep meeting former students
from
my classes at Harvard -- now all very grown-up.

I must stop now, for somebody is at the door to pick me up for dinner.
I
send you my warmest good wishes.

And happy New Year!

                                       Jerry

===============================================================
Jerome Bruner E-mail jerome.bruner@nyu.edu
University Professor Tel: (212) 998-6463
NYU School of Law FAX (212)673-6118
40 Washington Square South
Room 302
New York, N.Y. 10012

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, bella kotik wrote:

> Dear Jerry, I thought it may be interesting to you. It is from a
discussion
> group monitored by Mike Cole. I joined it this summer
>

On 9/13/07, Worthen, Helena Harlow <hworthen@ad.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> Good morning!
>
> I'm going to take up Cathrene's invitation to add some pieces to the
> broad portrait of the history of CHAT from my own idiosyncratic
> perspective.
>
> In 1962 I was a freshman at Harvard (then Radcliffe) and wandered into
> one of those 200-person lecture courses taught by Jerome Bruner, who
> assigned us Vygotsky's Thought and Language to read, translated by
> Hanfmann and Vakar, complete with the insert pamphlet containing
> Piaget's response. I have that copy on my desk as I write, with my
> 19-year old's comment, "An excellent book" in bright purple ballpoint
> ink on the flyleaf. Vygotsky, explained by Bruner, made sense in a way
> unlike anything else I had ever read about speech, language, learning,
> creativity and change. I had no idea at the time why it made sense; it
> just did.
>
> Bruner told us that in the 1940's and 1950's, both during the war and
> afterwards during the heyday of the Cold War, there were conferences
> where one might meet Soviet psychologists who would make presentations
> based on Pavlov but, over cocktails later, would say, "But the real
guy
> is Vygotsky, we're just calling it Pavlov because we have to." Bruner
> said (and of course, 45 years later this is not going to be an exact
> quote),"But no one [in the west] knew who this Vygotsky was."
>
> "No one" can't have been strictly true, because there was quite a bit
of
> cultural exchange back and forth between the US and the Soviet Union
in
> the 1920's and early 1930's, including Dewey and a lot of people from
> the worlds of theater, film and art.
>
> But I heard that the way the news about Vygotsky "got out" was at
least
> in part because of Bruner's connection to the Harvard Russian Project
> (which apparently is still going on), as described by Raymond A.
Bauer,
> 1916-1977, who was the Field Director in Germany of this project (the
> Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System) and then became a Harvard
> Business School prof. Some of his books are still available through
the
> MIT website. In the 1990's, when I was re-entering the world of
> education and trying to figure out why Vygotskian theory was so
> different, I read Bauer's book, "The New Man in Soviet Psychology,"
> which traces the development of Soviet psychology, from a particular
> point of view.
>
> The task of the Harvard Russian Project was to collect from Soviet
> refugees as much information as possible about what was going on in
the
> Soviet Union. The papers from this project are on the web:
>
> http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/fung/collections/davis.html#special
>
> Here is a quote from a letter on that site that conveys sharply the
> urgency of this research. It's addressed to someone who had apparently
> gone through the debriefing and wanted some kind of other help:
>
> "Since a clear and accurate conception of Soviet Russian is
> indispensable if we are to survive, I feel it a pity that your
knowledge
> does not get the recognition it deserves. Unfortunately, as you know,
we
> have no connection with government agencies and our field of action is
> limited to talking to Displaced Persons and making the results known
to
> the American people."
>
> Part of that "clear and accurate conception" was apparently an
> understanding of how a Marxist psychology would contribute to the
> creation of the New Man, whom I guess we expected we might meet on the
> battlefield. In US propaganda films of that period, this "new man" is
> represented by robot-like figures marching or working in unison, to
> suggest the tyranny of the collective.
>
> Helena
>
> Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
> Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> 504 E. Armory, Room 227
> Champaign, IL 61821
> Phone: 217-244-4095
> hworthen@uiuc.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Cathrene Connery
> Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 4:21 PM
> To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [xmca] Genealogy & the Evolution of CHAT
>
> [clip]
>
> What if everyone took a deep breath, typed the stem "In the
> beginning...." and wrote in a stream of conscious fashion knowing that
> there is a younger generation of scholars, an eager audience, who need
> and look up to your guidance? One or two paragraphs would be enough.
>
> [clip]
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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>

-- 
Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut
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