week 11 monday 10/30 Bill Ayers

1. week 11monday 10/30Bill Ayers

2. week 11wednesday 11/01

3. Michael Berube: life as we know it • “He looks Downsy around the eyes.” (42) • Would we ever have normal lives again? (42) • “Parents seem to be intellectualizing.” (43) • Human history doesn’t convince me that our brand of intelligence is just what the world was waiting for. (43) • Trisomy 21 happens quite often, maybe on the order of once in every 150 to 250 fertilizations. (46)

4. The real story of Down’s lies not in intelligence tests but in developmental delays across the board (46) • There has never been a better time than now to be born with Down’s syndrome (47) • There really is a difference between calling someone a “mongoloid idiot” and calling him or her a “person with Down’s syndrome” (47) • Delayed persons will get where they’re going eventually, if you only have some patience. (48)

5. “Well, Michael, if he were waking up every day in a state mental hospital, he wouldn’t be this little guy.” (49) • Indeed, there are days when, despite every thing I know and profess, I catch myself believing that people with Down’s syndrome are put here for a specific purpose—perhaps to teach us patience, or humility, or compassion, or mere joy. (49)

6. We possess one crucial characteristic: the desire to communicate, to understand, to put ourselves in some mutual, reciprocal form of contact with one another….we show up, from the day of out birth, programmed to receive and transmit even in the most difficult of circumstances. (51)

7. Among our deepest, strongest impulses is the impulse to mutual cuing. Nothing will delight James so much as the realization that you have understood him—except the realization that he has understood you, and recursively undestood his own understanding and yours….Communication is itself self-replicating. Sign unto others as you’d have them sign unto you. Pass it on. (51)

8. post-Piaget • parts of Piagetian theory that have not stood up to test • domain general stages • logico-mathematical structures as the primary constraint on development • view of kids as limited cognitively etc., unable to think abstractly

9. parts that have survived • kids intrinsically motivated to make sense of the world • learning an active process • assimilation and accommodation • people do develop, that is, change • knowledge is constructed

10. Piagetian post-Piagetian young solo scientist young social apprentice what child can do alone what child can do with others stages varies by domain—development generally not stage-like development: inside to outside development: outside to inside structural constraints human & cultural constraints egocentric child able to decenter cognitively and socially cognitively and socially capable limited kids kids focus on what kids can’t do focus on what kids can do learning follows development learning leads development culture not important culture central adults and children different adults and children similar primacy of cognitive importance of social formal logical understanding making sense language as formal system language as meaning-making tool

11. a post-Piaget view of kids • kids more able, adults less able • children and adults alike in how they learn if we control for familiarity • everyone egocentric across the life span, depending on the situation • learning domain-specific • development not as stage-like as Piaget supposed—some areas more stage-like than others • critical role of culture in learning & development