This is Brett Wigdortz. He runs Teach First. Teach First put trainee teachers in schools.
I hope you're not reading this on a phone so you can see the powerpoint slide behind him. What, you are reading it on a phone? Okay, I'll blow it up:
"Vygotskian postmodern pedagogical philosophy of the psychosomatic effects of the in situ geographical elevations of elation and depressions of mortality associated with exceptional graduates addressing education disadvantage."
So the translation would be, I guess, "The clever people we get to be teachers in tough schools go through some ups and downs in their first year and it makes them a bit sadface." I dunno, maybe I got that wrong.
Why is it written so funny? Well, I think it's a joke I am going to have to explain so explain it I shall. This is a "satire" of what some people call "Edu-Woo" or just "Woo". This is meant to be how philosophers and certain other academics talk. There are some words in it that might not make sense. Let's look at one of them:
Vygotskian: Vygotsky was this ultra badass teacher trainer and psychologist who literally won a lottery which let Jews go to University in Russia at a time when most couldn't, and then dedicated his life to studying the mind until he died of TB tragically young whilst still dictating to students so dedicated to him that they came and sat round the end of his bed and took notes whilst his life ebbed away.
Pretty good, eh?
I mean, if my students like me enough to get me something from the shop I think I'm doing pretty well.
Lately it's become pretty fashionable to do down Vygotsky because people think he said you should let kids talk when teachers are talking. Now, I haven't read everything he wrote, but I did read "Thinking and Speech" cover to cover this one time and I'm pretty sure he never said that. I know he implies (ibid. p.203) that speech is inferior to writing, and believes social speech is not communication per se but rather an extension of inner monologues. It cannot, therefore, be scientific. That doesn't sound much like the cartoon "progressive" I've seen lampooned.
What else do people think Vygotsky said? Oh yeah, they think he said that kids learn more from each other than from a teacher.
I never noticed that either - in fact he says their speech is usually "egocentric".
Vygotsky noticed that egocentric speech is very common in small children. He gave them some tasks to do involving blocks. What he did observe, though a series of experiments conducted under controlled, laboratory conditions was that
"The coefficient of egocentric speech nearly doubled when some difficulty or impediment was included in the test."
OR people talk to themselves when things get more difficult.
When I am trying to fix my computer I talk to myself quite a lot
"This fan came from...ugh the bloody thing...I need to...there"
You sound like a crazy person, like children sound most of the time. But that's fair enough, because I mostly only do things I can already do, but they can't do anything, they're gonna talk a lot of stream of consciousness oddness. Also they can't write yet. Mostly I write when my head hurts i.e. when my memory's full. A lot of my notes are nonsense. So there's that.
Now that quote makes Vygotsky sound like he is very dense and jargon heavy. But he can be incredibly lyrical. At one point he writes
"In the child, there exists no form of thinking divorced from the earth, from needs, wishes and desires"
(Thinking and Speech p.77)
Reading that is the only time an academic text has made me cry. It also seems just right to me, that (as everyone knows) children tell it like it is, that they are straightforward in liking what they like and hating what they hate.
The story of how little human beings come to think scientifically is one Vygotsky calls "Ontogenesis". It's interesting because people will write a lot about the Zone of Proximal Development and all the supposed damage it does to the idea of classroom discipline but very few people want to talk about Ontogenesis. I think that might be because it's a strong rebuttal of the "lightbulb" picture of how knowledge is acquired, and tons of people are paid up card carrying superfans of that.
According to the "lightbulb" picture there is a moment when a child goes "ohhh, I see" and that really is the moment they see.
Vygotsky basically thinks that learning is continual, applied and omnipresent. The notion of a "moment" where the child "gets it" is rubbished in Chapter 4 of Thinking and Speech. There's no moment where you suddenly see, just a life of frustrating gambits and forays into the unknown which is is own reward, which just is learning.
So we come back to Wiggdortz and the "exceptional graduates" who are being invited to laugh at these fusty philosophers and their dead Russian. The language of Teach First, visible on their advertising is "Make a Difference". Very laudable but how you make a difference is, according to Vygotsky, not with "interventions" or "lightbulb" lessons but rather committing to a path and staying on it for the long haul. So the way to make a difference is to provide and progress continuity, to shape the course of things through additions and alterations to the environment over time
"Where the environment does not create the appropriate tasks, advance new demands, or stimulate the development of intellect through new goals."
Thinking and Speech p.132
Fine sentiments, reflected in the words of one of my students recently, "The best teachers never let up."
I think we could all agree with that but, if that's so, then why make Vygotsky a figure of fun?
Partly it has to do with what Lacan once wrote was "How we all turn out...one line summaries in a book somewhere". I would hate to think that this exemplary teacher, who taught the teachers who taught the generation that built Sputnik, is fated for such treatment. But I do urge you, Teach First "exceptional graduate" or not, go to the source and make up your own mind, and don't be swept along on a tide of sneers.
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