Jean Piaget 491j5s

A Summary of the book “The language and thought of the child” (1923) By: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget • • • • • • • • • • •

Born in 1896, western Switzerland Piaget was son of professor of medieval literature at the local university. His strong interest in biology resulted publication of several scientific articles In 1917 published a philosophical novel, Recherché. After gaining his Ph.D, Piaget began studying child linguistic development In 1921 he became director of the institute jean-jacques Rousseau in Geneva. From 1925-29 he was professor of psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of science at university of Neuchatel. He returned to the university of Geneva as professor of scientific thought for the next decade. Simultaneously held posts with Swiss education authorities. In 1952 piaget became professor of genetic psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. Until his death in 1980 directed the international center for genetic epistemology in Geneva.

Key books • • • • •

The child’s conception of the world (1928) The moral judgment of the child (1932) The origin of intelligence in children (1953) Biology and knowledge (1971) The grasp of consciousness (1977)

The language and thought of the child This book is for anyone who has ever wondered how a child develops language, thought, and knowledge. Before this classic appeared, little was known of the way children think. In 1923, however, Jean Piaget, the most important developmental psychologist of the twentieth century, took the psychological world by storm with The Language and Thought of the Child. Applying for the first time the insights of social psychology and psychoanalysis to the observation of children, he uncovered the ways in which a child actively constructs his or her understanding of the world through language. The book has since been a source of inspiration and guidance to generations of parents and teachers. While its conclusions remain contentious to this very day, few can deny the huge debt we owe to this pioneering work in our continuing attempts to understand the minds of the child

Introduction • • • • • • •

Jean piaget was a master of natural world observation before he turned his mind to human matters. He learnt in these years-to observe first and classify later-set him up well for examining the subject of child thought, which had attracted plenty of theories but not a great deal of solid observation of actual children. He decided to focus on very down-to-earth issues such as: “why does a child talk and who is he/she talking to?” and “why does she ask so many questions” If there were answers, he knew they could benefit teachers greatly, and it was for educators mainly that he wrote The language and thought of the child. most explorer of the child mind had focused on quantitative nature of child psychologychildren were thought to be how they are because they have fewer mental abilities than adults and commit more errors. But piaget believed that it was not a matter of children having less or more of something, they are fundamentally different in the way they think. Communication problems exist between adults and children not because of gap in information, but due to quite different ways of seeing themselves within their worlds.

Focus of the book: why a child talks • •

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In opening pages, Piaget asked what he itted was a strange question: “ what are the needs which a child tends to satisfy when he talks? Any sane person would say that the purpose of language is to communicate with others, but if this were the case , he wondered why children talk when there is no one around, and why even talk to themselves, whether internally or muttering aloud, it was clear that language could not be reduced to the one function of simply communicating thought. Piaget conducted his research at the Rousseau Institute in Geneva, opened in 1912 for the study of child and teacher training. There he observed children of four and six, taking down everything they said while they worked and played, and the book includes transcripts of their “ conversations” And what he discovered is that when a children speak, a lot of the time they are not talking to anyone in particular. They are thinking aloud. He identified two types of speech: 1) egocentric 2) socialized

Continued… • With in the egocentric type were three pattern : 1) Repetition- speech not directed to people, saying words for the simple pleasure of it. 2) Monologue- whole commentaries that follows the child’s actions or play. 3) collective monologue- when children are talking apparently together, yet are not taking of what the others are saying. • He noted that until a certain age ( 7 years), children have no “ verbal continence” but must say anything that comes into their head. • He wrote, “A kindergarten or nursery is a society in which, strictly speaking, individual and social life are not differentiated”.

How children think

How adult think

1. Believe themselves to the center of universe, there is no need of the idea of privacy or withholding views out of sensitivity to others

1. Due to comparative lack of egocentricity , have adapted to a fully socialized speech pattern in which many things are left unsaid.

2. Their language involves gestures, 2. An adult’s greater mastery of language, movements and sounds. As these are not the more likely they are to be able or at words, they cannot express everything, so least aware of , the views of others children must remain partly a prison of their own mind

language , in fact takes people beyond themselves, which is why human culture puts such stress on teaching it to children- it enables them to eventually move out of the egocentric thinking.

Different thinking, Different worlds Piaget borrowed a distinction from psychoanalysis between two types of thought :

Directed or intelligent thought Undirected or autistic thought e.g water This distinction helped Piaget appreciate the development of children’s thought up to the age of 11. from 3-7 children are largely egocentric and have elements of autistic thought, but from 7-11 egocentric logic makes way for perceptual intelligence

• Piaget noticed that children think in of “schemas” which allow them to focus on the whole of a message without having to make a sense of every details. • He noted that trend in mental development is always from syncretic to analytical

Child logic • Piaget wondered why children, particularly those under 7, fantasize and dream and use their imagination so much. • He observed that because they do not engage in deductive or analytical thought, there is no reason to make a firm demarcation between “ the real” and “the not real”. As there minds do not work in of causality and evidence, everything seems possible. • When a child asks “what would happen if I were an angel?” to an adult the question is not worth pursuing because we know it can’t be real. But for a child anything is not only possible, it is explainable, since no objective logic is required. To satisfy their mind all that is required is motivation.

• In later writing, Piaget explored the final mental development, beginning at the age of 11 or 12. teenagers abilities to reason, think abstractly, make judgments, and consider future possibilities make them essentially the same as adults. From this point on it is a matter of increases in ability rather than qualitative changes.

conclusion • Piaget’s stages of child development have his impact on pre-school and school education has been great. • His observation of children led to broader theories on communication and cognition. • Piaget invented the field of “genetic epistemology,” which means how theories of knowledge evolve or change in relation to new information.

• Piaget wryly observed, a child’s world seems to work so well that, according to their understanding, logic is not required to it. • Adult often find it difficult to understand children because they have forgotten that logic plays no role in child’s mind. We cannot make children think in the same way as us before they reach a certain age.

• Piaget was ahead of his time in suggesting that we should educate people to be innovative and inventive thinkers who are aware of the subjectivity of their own minds, yet mature enough to accommodate new facts. • His initial experiments observing the language and thought of the child, therefore, led to great insights into how adults process knowledge and create new understanding.