BOOKS Vygotsky and Bernstein. When religious background has an influence on scientific research
By Elite Olstein*
The book “Vygotsky and Bernstein in the light of the Jewish tradition”, written by Antonella Castelnuovo and Bella Kotik, published by Academic Studies Press 2015, has been presented in Jerusalem on December 23 at Yellin College, one of the oldest and most prestigious College of Education in Israel. The two authors were present and each of them made a speech in front of a wide audience of professors and teachers. The key note speaker was Elite Olstein, Emeritus Professor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who expressed herself in very appreciative terms about the book.
Antonella Castelnuovo, who holds a PhD from the London University, is a professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of Siena, Italy. She is among the most important experts on the relationship between minorities, especially the Jewish community, and general society. Her work includes publications such as Ebrei e Protestanti nella storia d’Italia (Franco Angeli, 1996) Minoranze religiose e cultura europea (Franco Angeli, 1999), and the edited volume Giochi di ruolo e formazione interculturale (Carocci, 2007).
She has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at University of Massachusetts in Amherst (UMASS), U.S.A.
At the event, in tune with the Jewish tradition, many questions followed at the end of the speeches and the whole debate was very interesting and stimulating.
It is a very special honor for me to talk about this book, which brings together two of the giants of the twentieth century who have had an enormous impact on educational thinking, research and teaching. It has taken me a long time to come to grips with the idea that one’s roots and ethnic and religious backgrounds can be viewed as having a significant influence on one’s theoretical reflection, choice and research as a scientist. I was finally convinced by the two authors, my colleagues, my friends, that their investigation was worthwhile and yielded this very interesting book. The authors are fully aware of this position towards their endeavor, present a very perceptive description of the historical development of Jewish life, social positioning and the growth of Zionism in Europe in the last two centuries.
There is another intriguing fact in this investigation: Bernstein is a linguist and a sociologist of education and Vygotsky is a social-cognitivist psychologist, both very concerned with marginalized populations and the quest for improved and knowledgeable learning theories. Both, each in his own way, tried to describe, define and understand the language context in which children grow up and to find ways to ensure the acquisition of socially and culturally accepted and esteemed linguistic codes for children coming from different social and ethnic groups. The notion of ‘mediated knowledge’ is a key concept in both theories.
Vygotsky lived in the first part of the twentieth century yet his impact on education, child development and both social and psychological investigation is most prominent in the twenty-first century. When people say that he was “far ahead of his time” it is a very meaningful statement as many educational processes and interventions in the twenty-first century were greatly affected by Vygotsky.
Vygotsky’s work became known in the West in the early 60stiest and it immediately made a tremendous impact. First linguists and educators were uncertain about how they could build on his theories and we must remember that behaviorism was still at its prime but the social cognitivist saw the light right away. During the last fifty years there were more articles, books and retrospections published trying to understand and expand his theory and give it a variety of practical applications. Scaffolding is a key concept in education very definitely based on Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’. This process occurs through the support of the ‘more knowing other’ whether it is a peer who has the added knowledge, a mentor, a teacher or anyone else. Brunner, who always acknowledge the influence of Vygotsky on his own thinking further developed and defined scaffolding ‘learning through the joint construction of language and gradually withdrawing adult support as children master language’. The whole notion of collaborative learning and teaching as developed by Barbara Rogoff was greatly influenced by Vygotsky. How very important these insights are in today’s world, when we struggle with preparing youngsters for the twenty-first century- recognizing that language mediates learning and is translated into ‘action’ in other times and contexts.
Vygotsky’s early years and early education was embedded in Judaism. He also wrote articles for the Jewish community in Russia and developed literary criticism. Yet, in his career as a psychologist he chose the approach of the haskala, ‘be a Jew at home and a universalist outside’ Jews who chose this approach could combine their continuous practice of Jewish life at home while integrating in the larger society at work and in study.
The sad part about Vygotsky is of course the fact that he was not appreciated in his own country and that there was intense criticism of his theories as being not truly Marxist. This was particularly painful for him. He actually died without having any idea of the fact that future generations all of the world would greatly appreciate his theory of human development. Mediation has become such a central concept in education and endless books have been written and printed in all languages about his theories.
Basil Bernstein’s work was particularly dominant and influential in the seventies and eighties. His Jewish background is perhaps less obvious and we have less clear-cut reference to the Jewish background but he too was greatly affected by the experiences of his life as a youngster and by his interaction and familiarity with working classes in England. He devoted much of his life to refining a social theory of symbolic order by studying speech and language used by different groups within society. In the seventies and eighties his theory of restricted versus elaborated code was highly accepted and well known throughout the world. It raised the awareness of linguistics, sociologists and psychologists to the fact that one’s language reflects one’s environment. This led to a wide spectrum of research and endless intervention programs. We began to understand features of language use which we had not observed before. But the tragedy of Bernstein was the misunderstanding of many educators – he was open to mediated learning which could lead users of restricted code to a gradual development of more elaborated code – but it was viewed as “politically not correct” to talk about a “restricted” code and thus label the blue color workers as lower or limited in some way.
Especially the reference to his work as ‘deficit theory’ damaged his work considerably. In the nineties, when Bernstein’s theory was pushed aside by many, Jim Cummins’ work became acceptable and in some ways replaced the restricted and elaborated codes with ‘contextualized versus de-contextualized language use’ but many of us continued to rely on Bernstein’s descriptions and if we stopped using ‘restricted code’ we certainly continued to use ‘elaborated code’ as an important objective in language acquisition in general.
And now I would like to come back full circle to the question whether one should really look at the socio-cultural background of scientists in order to better understand their theories. It seems that Vygotsky, Brunner and Bernstein, all shared the belief that a child’s social environment and social interactions are key elements of the learning process. This is definitely true about Vygotsky and Bernstein.
The importance of Jewish background and culture in shaping one’s view of the world is well expressed by Einstein 1956: ‘The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love for justice and the desire for personal independence – these are the features of the Jewish tradition which makes me thank my stars that I belong to it.’
And of course the well-known story of the Jewish Nobel prize scientist who when asked what made him a successful scientist said: “When I came back from Heder at a very young age my mother always asked me ‘what good question did you ask the Rabbi today?’ – so I learned to ask good questions”.
* Elite Olstein is Emeritus Professor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.