Week 7 Post 1

During Chapter 12, it talked about international contexts. I took a real interest in Vygotsky’s idea of sociocultural contexts. Vygotsky’s idea basically means that the culture someone is in, will teach them skills that will help them to learn different things (Berger, p. 324). I enjoyed reading about how Brazilian peddlers (who never attended school or received an education) are well skilled at pricing their merchandise as well as making the correct change for their customers. Since these children cannot read, they look at the pictures and the colors of the money to help identify its worth. Since the children who are peddlers are constantly selling items, they must quickly learn how to best sell their items. These children learn how to change their selling prices as well as overall costs, and even calculate complex markup computations (Berger, p. 324). Due to the experiences that these children go through, they sometimes actually learn more and know more than children who are in school. Basically, the children street sellers from Brazil learned their math skills from their daily experiences, from other children who were also street sellers, and because of the social context they were in (Berger, p. 324). Before reading this, I always thought that I personally learned better by observing others. Likewise, I feel like my social context that I grew up in helped me to become a better learner. Since I am the youngest I three children, I would constantly be watching and learning from my other siblings. Even today I still feel like I watch and learn from their experiences so I don’t end up making the same mistakes one day.