Child Psychologist
Jean Piaget
He found the secrets of human learning
and knowledge hidden behind the cute
and seemingly illogical notions of
children
BY SEYMOUR PAPERT
Jean Piaget, the pioneering Swiss
philosopher and psychologist, spent much
of his professional life listening to children,
watching children and poring over reports of
researchers around the world who were
doing the same. He found, to put it most
succinctly, that children don't think like
grownups. After thousands of interactions
with young people often barely old enough
to talk, Piaget began to suspect that behind
their cute and seemingly illogical
utterances were thought processes that
had their own kind of order and their own
special logic. Einstein called it a discovery
"so simple that only a genius could have
thought of it."
Piaget's insight opened a new window into
the inner workings of the mind. By the end
of a wide-ranging and remarkably prolific
research career that spanned nearly 75
years--from his first scientific publication at
age 10 to work still in progress when he
died at 84--Piaget had developed several
new fields of science: developmental
psychology, cognitive theory and what
came to be called genetic epistemology.
Although not an educational reformer, he
championed a way of thinking about
children that provided the foundation for
today's education-reform movements. It was
a shift comparable to the displacement of
stories of "noble savages" and "cannibals"
by modern anthropology. One might say
that Piaget was the first to take children's
thinking seriously.
Others who shared this respect for
children--John Dewey in the U.S., Maria
Montessori in Italy and Paulo Freire in
Brazil--fought harder for immediate change
in the schools, but Piaget's influence on
education is deeper and more pervasive. He
has been revered by generations of
teachers inspired by the belief that children
are not empty vessels to be filled with
knowledge (as traditional pedagogical
theory had it) but active builders of
knowledge--little scientists who are
constantly creating and testing their own
theories of the world. And though he may
not be as famous as Sigmund Freud or
even B.F. Skinner, his contribution to
psychology may be longer lasting. As
computers and the Internet give children
greater autonomy to explore ever larger
digital worlds, the ideas he pioneered
become ever more relevant.
Piaget grew up near Lake Neuchatel in a
quiet region of French Switzerland known
for its wines and watches. His father was a
professor of medieval studies and his
mother a strict Calvinist. He was a child
prodigy who soon became interested in the
scientific study of nature. When, at age 10,
his observations led to questions that could
be answered only by access to the
university library, Piaget wrote and
published a short note on the sighting of an
albino sparrow in the hope that this would
influence the librarian to stop treating him
like a child. It worked. Piaget was launched
on a path that would lead to his doctorate in
zoology and a lifelong conviction that the
way to understand anything is to
understand how it evolves.