55 Jean Piaget quotes about childhood and learning

Jean Piaget is one of the most recognized psychologists and researchers for his contributions to developmental psychology. and learning. In his famous theory, he proposed various stages of cognitive development through which all individuals pass.

• You can learn more about it in our article: “Jean Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development”

Piaget's best quotes

Throughout his life, Piaget made several quotes that have gone down in history. In this article we review them.

• However, before you can review the most important aspects of his contributions in this post: “Jean Piaget's Theory of Learning”

Now yes, let's start!

1. Scientific thought, then, is not momentary, it is not a static instance, but it is a process

As a scientist, Piaget made a significant contribution to the study of cognitive development and intelligence.

2. When you teach a child something, you forever take away his chance to discover it for himself.

Children are curious, and when curiosity leads them to investigate, the experiential learning that occurs is truly enriching.

3. Possibility… in the proper accommodation of sensory-motor intelligence, it plays the same role as in scientific discovery. It is useful only to the genius and the revelations of it remain meaningless to the unskilled workers.

The sensory-motor period is one of the stages of Piaget's theory, in which the greatest achievement is the notion of the permanent object.

4. On the one hand, there are individual actions, such as pulling, pushing, touching, rubbing. These are those individual actions that most of the time lead to the abstraction of objects.

A great phrase by Piaget, abstraction is prior to the instrument of generalization and the child learns by manipulating objects. Piaget always believed that human beings are active in learning.

5. Scientific knowledge is in permanent evolution; who finds himself changed from one day to the next

Scientific thought is not static, it is constantly developing.

6. Look, I have no opinion on pedagogy. The problem of education interests me very much, because it is my impression that there is a lot to reform and transform, but I think that the The role of the psychologist is above all to provide facts that pedagogy can use, and not to put himself in their shoes to give it tips

Pedagogy can greatly benefit from psychology.

7. The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and inventing, that is, in building structures by structuring reality.

The creativity plays an important role in learning.

8. Each housing acquisition becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new housing.

Assimilation is one of the most important concepts revolving around Piagetian theory.

9. Knowledge is, then, a system of transformations that become progressively adequate

Learning is cumulative and develops, as Piaget explains.

10. Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of epistemology genetics, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that appears to be elderly

As in the previous point, a quote about cumulative learning.

11. I have always hated any deviation from reality, an attitude that I associate with my mother's poor mental health.

A reflection carried out by Piaget, in which it is possible to appreciate a certain touch of irony.

12. What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see

What we see determines our thinking, but our thinking also determines how we interpret what we see.

13. The main objective of education in schools should be the creation of 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, verify and not accept, everything that is offered to them

Piaget, in clear defense of creativity and active learning.

14. I couldn't think without writing

A great quote that invites reflection

15. What genetic epistemology proposes is to discover the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, from its elemental forms, continuing to the following levels, also including scientific knowledge

Piaget, making clear reference to genetic epistemology.

16. If you want to be creative, stay part childlike, with the creativity and inventiveness that characterizes children before being warped by adult society.

Children have a curious mindset in which they do not judge but are open to constant learning. Something that many adults should learn

17. The relationships between parents and children are, without a doubt, not only those of restriction. There is spontaneous mutual affection, which ranges from first asking the child for acts of generosity and even sacrificial, up to the very moving manifestations that are in no way prescribed. And here, without a doubt, is the starting point for the morality of the good that we will see developing together with the morality of right or duty, and that in some people completely replaces

Parents are the most important educational agents, as they educate their children on issues as important as morality or values.

18. Good pedagogy must confront the child with situations in which he experiments in the broadest sense of the word: try things to see what happens, handle objects, handle symbols, asking questions, looking for your own answers, reconciling what you find on one occasion with what you find on another comparing your achievements with those of others children

Children are active learners, explorers at their finest.

19. If an individual is intellectually passive, he will not achieve moral freedom.

Learners must be explorers building their own cognitive development.

20. In other words, knowledge of the outside world begins with an immediate use of the things, while self-knowledge is stopped by this purely practical contact and utilitarian

Experiential learning is a very powerful form of learning. More than the memory.

21. Education, for most people, means trying to bring the child to resemble the typical adult of his or her society… But for me, education means making creators… You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists

Culture attempts to shape our thoughts, our motivations, and even our expectations. This can be seen in an educational system that does not favor creativity at all. Fortunately, there are many psychologists and educators who are trying to change this way of working.

22. Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do

Problems and the attempt to solve them stimulates our creativity and our intelligence.

23. What role would books and manuals have then in this school? The ideal school would have no compulsory manuals for students, but only reference works that would be used freely... the only indispensable manuals are those used by the teacher.

Piaget referring to what his ideal school would be like, the one that would benefit student learning.

24. To express the same idea in another way, I believe that human knowledge is essentially active.

Once again, the vision of this psychologist is clear. Humans build our own learning.

25. Logic and mathematics are nothing more than specialized linguistic structures

Linguistic structures are the basis of our knowledge, says Piaget.

26. It is with children that we have the best opportunity to study the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, among other things.

Children were the participants in Piaget's studies.

27. Understanding is inventing

If we don't understand something, we won't be able to go further and be creative.

28. Children have a real understanding of what they only invent for themselves, and every time we try to teach them something too quickly, we prevent them from reinventing themselves.

We must not impose learning, because otherwise we will provoke memorization instead of understanding. Learning must be built by us.

29. Reflexive abstraction is not based on individual actions, but on coordinated actions.

Each stage of learning has its moment, according to Piaget

30. The second objective of education is to form minds that can be critical, that can verify and not accept everything that is offered to them. The great danger today is slogans, collective opinions, ready-made trends of thought. We have to be able to oppose individually, to criticize, to distinguish between what is right and what is not.

Piaget was always a defender of critical thinking.

31. The main objective of education is to create people capable of doing new things, and not simply repeat what other generations did.

People must be able to carry out their cognitive development actively

32. Knowledge cannot be a copy, since it is always a relationship between subject and object

Piaget is one of the greatest exponents of constructionism, and this quote makes it clear.

33. This does not mean that logic is strong enough to support the total construction of human knowledge.

Another clear reference to constructivist theory, where Piaget was one of the most representative figures.

34. Knowing reality implies building systems in continuous transformation that correspond, more or less, to reality

Knowledge, we build it to turn it into is our reality.

35. Thereafter, the universe is built on a set of permanently connected objects. by causal relationships that are independent of the subject and are placed in the time and space of the subject

The notion of the permanent object is one of the great achievements of the sensory-motor phrase.

36. A learned truth is only a half-learned truth, while the whole truth must be conquered, reconstructed or rediscovered by the student himself.

A quote that speaks of the truth and that stimulates free interpretation.

37. Everything that is taught to a child is prevented from inventing or discovering it.

The adult can provide tools for the child to learn, but it is the child who builds it.

38. Intelligence, the most plastic and at the same time the most permanent structural balance of conduct, is essentially a system of vital operations.

There is a curious paradox between the stability of intelligence and its ability to adapt to the environment.

39. Any psychological explanation, sooner or later, ends up resting on logic or biology.

Mental processes do not exist outside of biological processes outside of a logical analysis of their content.

40. To develop human intelligence it is essential to know mathematical logic

These dimensions of knowledge are an essential part of the intellect, according to Piaget.

41. We must start from this dual character of intelligence as something biological and logical at the same time.

The intellect exists thanks to the activity of nerve cells, but also thanks to the rules of logic.

42. In order to explain the psychological phenomenon well, it is necessary to study its line of formation.

What happens in the human mind It is the result of constant evolution and maturation.

43. There are many similarities between the development of knowledge in a child, on the one hand, and the development of knowledge in the scientific world, on the other.

Piaget establishes a comparison between both ways of extracting knowledge.

44. The fundamental idea of ​​my theory is almost always misunderstood

This author and researcher warns of the need to pay attention to the nuances of his work.

45. Human knowledge is always an assimilation or an interpretation

Piaget emphasizes the importance of these learning mechanisms.

46. The structure is the source of the deductive capacity

the deduction is based on the formal rules.

47. If knowledge were innate then it would be present in babies and other animals.

A phrase about the possibility that there are principles of knowing that exist innately.

48. The problems are solved according to the different levels of knowledge

Each stage of cognitive development offers different solutions.

49. It is necessary to study how the fact of reaching a new knowledge opens the mind to new possibilities

learning supposes make qualitative leaps in our level of knowledge.

50. The development of intelligence is a sequence of deductive operations

Piaget believed in the importance of deductive reasoning as a learning engine.

51. The first clear indication in the development of knowledge is the constant creativity

Lateral thinking It is a fundamental aspect of intelligence.

52. Operations are transformations that are reversible

In the mind games that make up learning, operations are always reversible.

53. I am a constructivist because I constantly build or help build knowledge

A sentence about Piaget's philosophical foundations.

54. Mathematics is in constant construction, and we can see this even in the day to day of a child

The development of mathematical ability is evolving.

55. A child never draws what he sees, he draws his interpretation of it.

Piaget questions the idea of ​​portraying objectively.