We talk a lot about memorizing being a “bad” way to teach. Through AST, we are trying to get our students to really understand a phenomena, instead of memorizing and repeating what we say, so I was interested this week to read Vygotsky’s thoughts on memory and thinking. Specifically, he notes that “for the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to recall means to think” (p. 51). At a young age, developmentally children recall different memories, but this process shifts/reverses as the child grows up. If I understand Vygotsky correctly, he is suggesting that cognitive development affects thinking, and there is an age-component to memory.
I am confused, though, about how the podcasts tied into Vygotsky’s connection between memory and thinking. I also love Radiolab and was excited to have some podcasts from them included this week! I don’t know a lot about developmental psychology, but I’ve always wondered why I don’t remember learning English. Is it because I learned it when I was so little, or because learning a language changed my “memory paths”? I was really interested in the story of the woman who had a stroke and had to relearn English. She mentioned that she didn’t like talking about her days without language at first, as they were too dark, and after a while, she couldn’t remember what it was like without language. Her story seems to support the hypothesis that learning a language at a young age isn’t the only reason why we don’t remember the process. Somehow, our ability to remember is tied to language?
So my next thought is what if some other being (alien) interacted with us, but they had so many more senses than we do? I can’t even imagine another sense outside of our 5, but what if an alien had it and taught us to? What if we were Ildefonso and we are missing a whole other way of thinking?
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Other curious quotes:
“the animal merely uses external nature; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals” (p. 291)