Elizabeth Dean- Orality and Literacy Categorizing Objects

Reading my assigned portion of Ong's Orality and Literacy, brought up some interesting reflections about thinking and more specifically thinking processes among oral people, in contrast to our thinking processes. Ong discusses A.R.Luria's research he described in his book; "Cognitive Development: Cultural and Social Foundations." He gathered his research on oral thought through interview like settings, where he interviewed subjects. He had 5 main observations in regards to oral though including the way in which they categorize objects, and the way in which they define objects among other things. I found it really intriguing that oral people recognize a simple shape such as a circle, and call it a tangible object, such as a moon or a plate as opposed to a cirlce. Its odd to think that they dont even know what the word circle means.I think it is interesting, because I don't necessarily think its a bad thing, they way they think and it make syou wonder if the categories of shapes that weve been taught since kindergarden is really even that necessary. I suppose in an amount of areas the categorical names of shapes may come in handy, but honestly I don't think they are quite as necessary as they appear to be.