15 Feb Vygotsky — The Biggest Loser?
February 15, 2009
This might be a first — invoking the Zone of Proximal Development to sell a health club! I was doing a “Vygotsky” search on UTube and the first one to come up was an ad for getting fit, not on your own but with others – Shedfast on UTube.
What do you think?
Jan
Posted at 20:58h, 23 FebruaryDon’t know why the ZONE diet people haven’t picked up on this yet…..but an obscure gym did instead.
Achilles Delari Junior
Posted at 07:33h, 20 FebruaryWhy not to make a short movie with similar title, but with a serious reply in critical language against this kind of strange situation not only in particular, but generally (in all cases in what social memory and personal biographical experience are inadvertently allocated in an impoverished discourse) and put in UTube too? In order that every time when any people access the “fitness campaign” could see another point of view too – democratically. It’s possible? Perhaps they begin to think twice… A thinking that think itself will be desirable to people sharing any ZDP…
What do you think about?
loisholzman
Posted at 14:11h, 19 FebruaryOur world is indeed strange!
Vygotsky just might become a household word and his ideas known not through any scholarly work or discoveries but through a fitness campaign.
Mary Fridley
Posted at 22:25h, 17 FebruaryI thought the ad was rather clever and if I had to guess, think it would help the country attract customers, if only because losing weight as an individualistic activity has been proven almost impossible. However, since I’m in the middle of reading “Vygotsky at Work and Play,” it does help me appreciate how much the more traditional “tool for result” understanding of what ZPD (scaffolding, etc.) makes it far easier for Vygotsky’s work to be used in this way, since it’s pretty simple to substitute fitness trainer for some other kind of expert.
Achilles Delari Junior
Posted at 03:35h, 15 FebruaryI’m feel not very happy… But polissemy exists even when do not confirm our world view. Bakhtin speaks about “a struggle at the sign arena”… The sign “Vygotsky” will not be different… People can use him like an “icon” to obtain marketing privileges, and so on. I think that we can and must criticize this kind of use of Vygotsky’s name and theoretical terms like “slogans”… But we must not forbid this at all… If we try to forbid the struggle is not showed to society… And I think that the struggle in the arena of sign Vygotsky is very broader than this specific situation. It’s curious, sometimes maybe hilarious, but not really absolutely surprising in our times, in our strange world… Is history. History is process… Signs are social… Bakhtin said that nor “relativistic” neither “dogmatic” approaches are realy dialogic. But things are relational, even our ethic vision and valuesl don´t need to be relative to everything (war, murder, racism, sexism, class exploration, etc.). Our words can fight too, but the other word, not only of a partner, but of an enemy too, must stay in scene too, playing the game… It´s what I wonder…
Excuse me about my English mistakes, I never formally study this language.
Best wishes.
Achilles.