Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piagetwas a Swiss clinical psychologist known for his pioneering work in child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 August 1896
CityNeuchatel, Switzerland
CountrySwitzerland
self games common
Before games are played in common, no rules in the proper sense can come into existence. Regularities and ritualized schemas are already there, but these rites, being the work of the individual, cannot call forth that submission to something superior to the self which characterizes the appearance of any rule.
self world contact
In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.
children sacrifice self
The relations between parents and children are certainly not only those of constraint. There is spontaneous mutual affection, which from the first prompts the child to acts of generosity and even of self-sacrifice, to very touching demonstrations which are in no way prescribed. And here no doubt is the starting point for that morality of good which we shall see developing alongside of the morality of right or duty, and which in some persons completely replaces it.
self law causes
The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects.
mean self expression
True interest appears when the self identifies itself with ideas or objects, when it finds in them a means of expression and they become a necessary form of fuel for its activity.
capable create education goal inventive men principle repeating simply
The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done -- men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.
becomes begins capable child objective practical purely recall starting subjective
We recall how, starting with purely practical and quasi-physiological groups, the child begins by elaborating subjective groups, then arrives at objective groups, and only then becomes capable of representative groups.
capable creating creativity critical education goal inventive men principal repeating schools simply women
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
aggregate built connected objective objects permanent placed relations subject time
From this time on, the universe is built up into an aggregate of permanent objects connected by causal relations that are independent of the subject and are placed in objective space and time.
call objects refer second shall term type using
The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense.
actions individual time
On the one hand, there are individual actions such as throwing, pushing, touching, rubbing. It is these individual actions that give rise most of the time to abstraction from objects.
knowledge system
Knowledge, then, is a system of transformations that become progressively adequate.
children thinking small-numbers
Much research in psychology has been more concerned with how large groups of people behave than about the particular ways in which each individual person thinks... too statistical. I find this disappointing because, in my view of the history of psychology, far more was learned, for example, when Jean Piaget spent several years observing the ways that three children developed, or when Sigmund Freud took several years to examine the thinking of a rather small number of patients.
children eye light
The discussion of the game of marbles seems to have led us into rather deep waters. But in the eyes of children the history of the game of marbles has quite as much importance as the history of religion or of forms of government. It Is a history, moreover, that is magnificently spontaneous; and it was therefore perhaps not entirely useless to seek to throw light on the child's judgment of moral value by a preliminary study of the social behaviour of children amongst themselves.