Betsy Milleson
TLS Paper #1
October 1, 2007
I interpret that Rogoff and Plato hold the learning/teaching/schooling triad as
synonymous. While coming from very different cultural angles, both theorists hold
that cultural values determine the triad of learning/teaching/schooling.
Rogoff determines that community values determine the teaching and learning
process (p.23). One overarching model of human development integrates the
child into the adult community. The child participates in group activities and
learns through mimicking, mirroring adult behaviors until the child reaches a level
of proficiency that the skill can be successfully executed in a real setting. Adults
teach necessary skills by performing daily tasks and integrating the child into the
social community (p.23). Machete play of Efe toddlers serves as an example.
This [learning] play shortly leads to help in the garden, meal preparation and
foraging activities (p.6). In the other style of human development, the Western
style, children experience age-graded segregation and are excluded to schools
or child centered activities. In this system, children learn through lessons
abstracted from the actual act, often through solitary or one on one interaction
(p.8). They are taught outside the home by individuals other than their parents in
a highly verbal manner (p.22,23). Most children in industrialized countries
experience this model of learning.
Plato's interpretation of learning agrees with Rogoff, that community values
determine the learning/teaching process. In Plato's time, most learning was done
through apprenticeship [teaching], linking Greek learning to the Integrated Child
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approach of human development. For example, the Greek community valued
horsemanship, which a man learned through apprenticeship to a master
horseman. True today as in Plato's time, learning can be hindered by what skills
are more valued than others. In Plato's conversation with Antyus, an upstanding
(valued) statesman, Antyus shows scorn for Sophists, while knowing very little
about them. This can be related to Rogoff's discussion of individuals feeling
threatened by examination of other cultural systems (p.14). As the position of
Sophist threatened a mainstream Greek (what does the Sophist do all day but
befuddle gullible youth?), inclusion of multicultural interpretations on living in "The
[One] Right Way" threatens the dominant group's monopoly on the Right Way.
Rogoff advocates a suspension of judgment when examining a new cultural
practice (p.17). Plato also applies suspension of judgment to learning, urging
Meno to fully define virtue in its 'chained' aspect before defining virtue in his
experientially derived terms.
Rogoff’s view on schooling asserts that schooling guided by the values
important to the culture. In communities that practice age-graded segregation,
childhood becomes a period of preparation for adult life (p.23). Therefore
schooling separates the child and gives them a refined skill set to draw upon
after their introduction to the adult world. In the integrated child model, the child
participates in the adult world at the outset, merging schooling with life and
leaving no separation between the two concepts (p.24).
Plato believes that schooling involves a dialogue aimed toward memory
retrieval. Coming from a culture which believed in immortal souls and an
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underworld, Plato (seemingly) subscribed to the idea that souls were
reincarnated. In his discussion of learning, Socrates quoted Greek [myth]
theology: “the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as
men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous
and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.” In Plato’s
view, the process of learning/teaching/schooling constitutes mobilizing
recollection.
* Given the format of Meno, no pages were cited. This will be remedied in later revisions
of the paper.
Jowlett, B. (1995). Plato: Meno. Retrieved September 28, 2007, from
www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/plato/meno/meno.html
Rogoff, B, (2003). Orienting Concepts and Ways of Understanding the Cultural Nature of
Human Development. In The Cultural Nature of Human Development (pp. 3-33). New
York: Oxford University Press.
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