Schooling Affords Categorization

Alexander Luria, a founder of the Russian-Historical School of cultural psychology, interviewed Russian peasants with no formal education.  

• The participants were given a list of four objects and they were ask to identify the one that didn’t belong
• Often participants focused on concrete and practical aspects of how the objects could be used together, and did not create any categories 

Example questions

Participant 1:

- “Hammer, saw, log, hatchet.  Which one doesn’t belong?”  

“They’re all alike.  I think all of them have to be here.  See, if you’re going to saw, you need a saw, and if you have to split something you need a hatchet.  So they’re all needed here.”

 

“Which of these things could you call by one word?”

“How’s that?  If you call all three of them a ‘hammer,’ that won’t be right either.”

“But one fellow picked three things - the hammer, saw, and hatchet- and said they were alike."

“A saw, a hammer, and a hatchet all have to work together.  But the log has to be here too!”

“Why do you think he picked these three things and not the log?"

"Probably he’s got a lot of firewood, but if we’ll be left without firewood, we won’t be able to do anything.”

 Participant 2:

“Hammer, saw, log, hatchet.  Which one doesn’t belong?”

“It’s the hammer that doesn’t fit!  You can always work with a saw, but a hammer doesn’t always suit the job, there’s only a little you can do with it.”

"Yet one fellow threw out the log.  He said the hammer, saw, and hatchet were all alike in some way, but the log is different.”

“If we’re getting firewood for the stove, we could get rid of the hammer, but if it’s planks we’re fixing, we can do without the hatchet.”

“If you had to put these in some kind of order, could you take the log out of the group?”

"No, if you get rid of the log, what good would the others be?”

"Suppose I put a dog here instead of the log?"

“If it was a mad dog, you could beat it with the hatchet and the hammer and it would die.”

 

In sum, many cognitive skills and habits that we are often not aware of, emerge as the product from formal schooling.