Reading :: L.S. Vygotsky’s Pedological Works. Volume 2.: The Problem of Age

 L.S. Vygotsky’s Pedological Works. Volume 2.: The Problem of Age

by L.S. Vygotsky (Author), David Kellogg (Translator), Nikolai Veresov (Translator) 

In contrast to Volume 1 in this series, Volume 2 does not read like a lecture series, although that is what it was meant to be, according to the translators: 

The lectures in the first volume Foundations of Pedology were uniformly short, orderly, and complete. Although The Problem of Age is supposed to be a companion course, following on from the foundations, Vygotsky’s lectures and notes are often long, frequently discursive, and yet almost always still incomplete in some excruciatingly crucial way. (Kellogg & Veresov, p.xviii)

The problem of age is not precisely defined here — it’s sort of talked around, by both the translators and Vygotsky — but boils down to questions around chronological and developmental age. Do children develop in predictable stages? Yes. Do these stages happen chronologically, with each child hitting milestones at the same time? No. Can we assess “the real level of development attained by the child” (p.50)? Yes, and it must be done relationally, Vygotsky argues:

The real level of development of the child is defined as plus or minus the difference between his passport age and the standard of the population of children of his age, corresponding to the level of development which is set for a child with the help of pedological research. (Vygotsky, p.53)

As in Volume 1, Volume 2 features an outline and discussion of each chapter by the translators, followed by Vygotsky’s chapter. The early chapters cover the concept of pedological age, age periodization, structure and dynamics of age, and diagnostics of development. Then we get to alternating crises and ages: the crisis of birth; the age of infancy; the crisis of the first year of life; etc. Vygotsky’s chapters end with school age, thinking in school age, and the negative phase of the transitional age, i.e., the crisis at age 13. 

At the end, Veresov and Kellogg offer some concluding remarks, connecting the chapters to broader scholarship on Vygotsky and contextual information about the USSR during the time he wrote these chapters. For instance, they insightfully consider how Vygotsky’s clinical work drew on other theories such as Freudianism and why. They also consider what it might mean to put the Vygotskian idea of periodization into practice today. They conclude that Vygotsky’s chapters

offered little more than a tantalizingly distinct but ultimately unattained end. Surely we are now in a better position to appreciate how very promising that little bit more that Vygotsky offered us toward that end was; surely, we are now in a worse position to reconcile ourselves to the excruciating frustration of not attaining it. (p.327)

And I think that is a good place to leave it. Vygotsky’s thoughts on the problem of age are well worth considering, but they are also unfinished. Kellogg and Veresov do a fine job of contextualizing, outlining, and critiquing these ideas while finding promise for developing them. If you’re interested in these aspects, definitely pick up this book.