I was sitting at my desk today and a new employee at school came rushing into my office. He was wafting in front of me a piece of blue paper and looking quite frantic. I asked him what the problem was, he told me that the bloke from the Post Graduate teaching course had come in to see him and given him this ’test’ to do. I said...ok..let me look. I looked at it and was quite intrigued by the question that had been asked concerning Vygotsky and it has got me thinking.

This was the question asked below:

When small children are playing, they often keep up a running commentary on what
is happening: “And now the train’s going round the tower, and it’s banging in to the
tower, and – oh no – the tower’s toppling down…”. Vygotsky calls this an external
monologue. As time goes on, the external monologue is internalized as thought.
The speech structures mastered by children therefore become the basic structures
of their thinking. This means that the development of thought is to a great extent
determined by the linguistic ability of the child. What does education have to learn from this work by Vygotsky?

My initial thoughts were that this was pretty straight forward, however I thought about it some more and realised that Vygotsky is in some respects working outside the linguistics work of Chomsky in that he does not recognise the innate linguistic structures we are born with. In 21st Century psychology we must not forget the work of the past from leaders like Vygotsky but I think that using Vygotsky in education needs rethinking considerably. The premise that the linguistic ability of a child determines the development of thought is fundamentally inaccurate.  In fact I will explore these thoughts a little more over the next few weeks.  I have scribd the Vygotsky document. 

To conclude this little preamble I will say that I thought the question asked about Vygotsky was quite annoying. Without a good understanding of psychology the question would have given  a naive introspection about the ideas around the external monologue.  The part of the question I  found particularly objectionable was the part that linked the linguistic ability of a child directly to their ability to think.  I will not blame this on Vygotsky (I am sure he will now be happy in his grave) or the  author of the document above, the blame should be firmly placed with the University department who put together such a cack handed question.