LEV VYGOTSKY (1896-1934)

From: www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html by Ricardo Schütz

A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.

Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.

Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; it finds its reality and form.

Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them.

... the speech structures mastered by the child become the basic structures of his thinking.

The structure of the language one habitually uses influences the way he perceives his environment...

From: The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child

In the process of development the child not only masters the items of cultural experience but the habits and forms of cultural behaviour, the cultural methods of reasoning. We must, therefore, distinguish the main lines in the development of the child’s behaviour. First, there is the line of natural development of behaviour which is closely bound up with the processes of general organic growth and the maturation of the child. Second, there is the line of cultural improvement of the psychological functions, the working out of new methods of reasoning, the mastering of the cultural methods of behaviour.

From: The Psychology of Art

Eichenwaid (…) claims that it is impossible as well as unnecessary to teach literature in the schools. "Should one teach literature?" he asks. "Literature, like the other arts, is optional. It represents an entertainment of the mind. . . . Is it necessary that students be taught that Tatiana fell in love with Onegin, or that Lermontov was bored, sad, and unable to love forever?" 

Eichenwald is of the opinion that it is impossible to teach literature and that it should be taken out of the school curriculum because it requires an act of creativity different from all the other subjects taught at school. But he proceeds from a rather squalid aesthetic, and all his weak spots become obvious when we analyze his basic position, "Read - enjoy, but can we force people to enjoy?" Of course, if "to read" means "to enjoy," then literature cannot be taught and has no place in the schools (although someone once said that the art of enjoyment could also he taught). A school that eliminates lessons in literature is bound to be a bad school.

Gershenzon comes to the conclusion: "Poetry cannot and must not be a compulsory subject of education; it is time that it again become a guest from paradise on earth, loved by everyone, as was the case in ancient times. Then it will once again become the true teacher of the masses." The basic idea here is that poetry is a heavenly guest and it must be made to resume the role it played "in ancient times." But Gershenzon does not concern himself with the fact that these ancient times are gone forever, and that nothing in our time plays the same role it played then. He ignores this fact because he believes that art is fundamentally different from all the other activities of man. For him, art is a kind of a mystical or spiritual act that cannot be recreated by studying the forces of the. According to him, poetry cannot be studied scientifically." One of the greatest mistakes of contemporary culture," he says,' application of a scientific or, more precisely, a naturalistic method to the study of poetry." Thus, what contemporary scholars consider to be the only possible way of solving the riddle of art is for Gershenzon the supreme mistake of contemporary culture.

Future studies and investigations are likely to show that creating a work of art is not a mystical or divine act of our soul, it is as real an act as all the other movements of our body, only much complex. We have discovered in the course of our study that a creative act that cannot be recreated by means of purely conscious operations. But, by establishing that the most important elements in art are subconscious or creative, do we automatically eliminate any and all conscious moments and forces? The act of artistic creation cannot be taught. This does not mean, however, that the educator cannot cooper ate in forming it or bringing it about. We penetrate the subconscious through the conscious. We can organize the conscious processes in such a way that they generate subconscious processes, and everyone knows that an act of art includes, as a necessary condition, all preceding acts of rational cognizance, understanding, recognition, association, and so forth. It is wrong to assume that the later subconscious processes do not depend on the direction imparted by us to the conscious processes. By organizing our conscious, which leads us toward art, we insure a priori the success or failure of the work of art. Hence Molozhavy correctly states that the act of art is "the process of our response to the phenomenon, although it may never have reached the stage of action. This process . . . widens the scope of our personality, endows it with new possibilities, prepares for the completed response to the phenomenon, that is, behavior, and also has educational value . . . “

These considerations need one substantial correction if we move from the field of general psychology into child psychology. When we determine the influence exerted by art, we must take into account the specific peculiarities facing one who deals with children. Of course this is a separate field, a separate and independent study, because the domain of child art and the response of children to art is completely different from that of adults. However, we shall say a few brief words on the subject and trace a basic line along which child psychology intersects this field. There are remarkable phenomena in the art of children. First, there is the early presence of a special structure required by art, which points to the fact that for the child there exists a psychological kinship between art and play. "First of all," says Bühler, "is the fact that the child very early adopts the correct structure, which is alien to reality but required by the fairy tale, so that he can concentrate on the exploits of the heroes and follow the changing images. It seems to me that he loses this ability during some period of his development, but it returns to him in later years. . . ."  Apparently art does not perform the same function in a child as it does in an adult. The best example of this is a child's drawing which in many cases is on the borderline of artistic creativity. The child does not understand that the structure of a line can directly express the moods and trepidations of the heart and soul. The ability to render the expressions of people and animals in different positions and gestures develops very slowly in a child, for various reasons. The principal one is the fundamental fact that a child draws patterns, not events or phenomena. Some claim the opposite, but they seem to ignore the simple fact that a child's drawing is not yet art for the child. His art is unique and different from the art of adults, although the two have one very interesting characteristic in common. It is the most important trait in art and we shall mention it in conclusion. Only recently was it noticed that certain absurdities or amusing nonsense which can be found in nursery rhymes by inverting the most commonplace events play a tremendously important role in child art. Most frequently the required or desired absurdity is achieved in a nursery rhyme by assigning certain functions of object A to object B, and vice versa. . . . "The hermit asked me how many strawberries grow at the bottom of the ocean. I answered him: 'As many as there are red herrings in the forest.' To understand this nursery jingle the child must know the truth about life: herrings exist only in the ocean, and strawberries only in the forest. He begins to look for the absurd only when he is absolutely sure of the facts."  We, too, feel that the statement, that this aspect of child art comes very close to play, is true; as a matter of fact, it gives us a good explanation of the role and the significance of art in a child's life. "We still do not quite understand the connection which exists between nursery rhymes and child's play. . . . When evaluating books for small children, critics frequently forget to apply the criterion of play. Most folk nursery rhymes do not issue from games but are play, a game in themselves: a play of words, a play of rhythms, sounds; . . . the-se muddles always maintain some sort of ideal order. There is system in this folly. By dragging a child into a topsy-turvy world, we help his intellect work, because the child becomes interested in creating such a topsy-turvy world for him- self in order to become more effectively the master of the laws governing the real world. These absurdities could be dangerous for a child if they screened out the real interrelationships between ideas and objects. In- stead, they push them to the fore, and emphasize them. They enhance (rather than weaken) the child's perception of reality." 

Here, too, we observe the same phenomenon of the dualism of art. In order to perceive art, we must contemplate simultaneously the true situation of things and their deviation from this situation. We can also observe how an effect of art arises from such a contradictory perception. Since absurdities are tools for the child to use in understanding reality, it becomes suddenly clear why the extreme leftists in art criticism come up with a slogan: art as a method for building life.

Psychological investigation reveals that art is the supreme center of biological and social individual processes in society, that it is a method for finding an equilibrium between man and his world, in the most critical and important stages of his life. This view of course completely refutes the approach according to which art is an ornament, and thereby leads us to doubt the correctness of the above statement. Since the future has in store not only a rearrangement of mankind according to new principles, not only the organization of new social and economic processes, but also the "remolding of man," there seems hardly any doubt that the role of art will also change.

It is hard to imagine the role that art will play in this remolding of man.