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
The principal 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 discovers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education should nurture creativity and critical thinking rather than mere memorization.
Jean Piaget emphasizes that the primary objective of education is to cultivate individuals who are innovative and capable of original thought, rather than just replicating the knowledge of past generations. He asserts a secondary goal of education is to develop critical thinkers who can analyze information and challenge accepted norms, rather than passively accepting them.
Themes
EducationCreativityCritical ThinkingInnovationLearning
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a conference on innovative teaching methods might use this quote to emphasize the importance of fostering creativity.
More from Jean Piaget
All quotes →Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.
Jean PiagetRead
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.
Jean PiagetRead
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.
Jean PiagetRead
Play is the work of childhood.
Jean PiagetRead
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.
Jean PiagetRead
Similar quotes
Across much of the developing world, by the time she is 12, a girl is tending house, cooking, cleaning. She eats what's left after the men and boys have eaten; she is less likely to be vaccinated, to see a doctor, to attend school.
Nancy GibbsRead
If there is anything for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge.
Horace MannRead
I didn't have any idea of what I was getting into by going away to college. And I was scared. I was scared of failing. I was scared of it not being for me because I was going to be one of the first people in my family to go off to college.
Jacqueline WoodsonRead
We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
B. F. SkinnerRead
Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start
HoraceRead
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
Terry PratchettRead