Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey

Daniel Dickens

And

Carolyn Starkey

PowerPoint prepared by DickensPowerPoint prepared by Dickens

Good Morning, I am Tim Russert and this is Meet the Press. Joining

me today via satellite from the grave are

John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky.

I want to thank both of you for disturbing you to allow us to talk with you about your philosophies.

What would you want people today to know about you?

I am Lev Vygotsky, born in Byelorussia in 1896. I started out as a physician and developed a genetic understanding of childhood development (children progress through a series of stages.)

What do you mean by stages? Will you elaborate on that a bit?

Children proceed through a series of zones of development based on social development...I like to call it ZPD.

ZPD stands for Zones of Proximal Development. For example...Tim may I borrow your white board?

Sure?

Why won’t

this fit?

The arrow point to a circle. You have a

circle in your hands.

The child’s mother saw that the child was frustrated and intervened. The new level of development for the child is a result of

the assistance he received.

I am a native, born in Vermont in 1859 to merchants and the product of strict schooling. I attended Johns

Hopkins for my Ph D after two years of teaching high school.

John tell us about yourself..

I was 92 when I died and I saw a lot of life

from reconstruction to the Wars. I believe

that practical knowledge is the key to education. Some even call me a pragmatist. I

have written more books and articles than most people will read.

I hated the strict I hated the strict schooling of my youth schooling of my youth

because it did not allow because it did not allow for all of my interests to for all of my interests to be explored. I worked be explored. I worked throughout my life to throughout my life to combat ineffective combat ineffective

methods for teachers. I methods for teachers. I wanted students to be wanted students to be students rather than students rather than memorizers of facts.memorizers of facts.

Schools should help to prepare students to be effective members in a democracy. People learn to think

and reason by thinking and reasoning. Tim…may I use the

board to demonstrate?You may.

Today’s Latin root word is intro...Does anyone know a

word from this root?

Introspective?

I would like the chance to look

introspectively at what I enjoy doing.

Hmm…It appears that this wagon is

missing a motor all together.

That one is too small, that one is too large, but this one is just

right.

This painted horse will perform nicely.

The Child isn’t allowed to exercise his potential for problem solving under the stringent guidelines of

the formal classroom and he needs study what interests him.

Not being alive for the computer age, what are your thoughts on technology?

The internet and technology gives a much needed breath of air to education because it moves beyond text books.

Technology allows for instruction that is meaningful and useful to students thus encouraging them to participate in their education.

Technology allows for students to develop abilities that are necessary attributes for any citizen in a democracy. They have more access to areas of knowledge that don’t lend themselves to being static.

I want to thank both John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky for their participation this morning. Dewey’s book

Democracy and Education is quite a page turner.

Vygotsky’s book Thought and Language was only widely recognized after

his death and is translated into English that is still a

bit complex.

Remember…“If it is Sunday it is Meet the Press, or meet these

important philosophers from their places of rest.