Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.
Jean PiagetRead
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators...not conformists
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education should focus on fostering creativity and innovation rather than conformity to societal norms.
Jean Piaget challenges traditional views of education, emphasizing that its primary aim should not just be to shape children into typical members of society. Instead, he advocates for a transformative approach to education that creates inventors and innovators who think independently and contribute creatively to the world, rather than merely conforming to existing standards and expectations.
Themes
EducationCreativityInnovationNonconformityLearning
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on the importance of creativity in schools.
More from Jean Piaget
All quotes →Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.
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Children's games constitute the most admirable social institutions. The game of marbles, for instance, as played by boys, contains an extremely complex system of rules - that is to say, a code of laws, a jurisprudence of its own.
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Everyone knows that at the age of 11-12, children have a marked impulse to form themselves into groups and that the respect paid to the rules and regulations of their play constitutes an important feature of this social life.
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Play is the work of childhood.
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The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.
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