How About that Piaget?
The post today is directed toward parents and teachers of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
That's not to say that others won't find it fascinating, I'm just saying that parents and teachers might find some "sage" advice.
To start, I once heard the definition of an expert is: "a person with a briefcase, at least 50 miles from home". I don't claim to be an "expert", but I am confident in my knowledge of child development and can identify developmentally appropriate practice when I see it. I feel this allows me to present some thoughts for you to think about and invite you to take what you will from these thoughts.
So today's post is the first one regarding children's development and what children should learn that will benefit them throughout their life. It seems that parents and teachers often feel that young children must be getting "ready" for the next step or skill or concept.
Jean Piaget, the eminent Swiss psychologist, examined how a child develops play, language, logic, time, space, and number concepts throughout his long career and wrote many volumes on the ways in which a child learns to understand the world.
Piaget's theory is centered on cognitive development. Piaget believed children learn through doing. The world was not just observed and imitated, but interpreted. Piaget conceived of development as a sequence of stages through which all children pass in order to achieve an adult level of intellectual functioning. Later stages evolve from and are built on earlier ones.
During a transitional period, a child may be in one stage regarding language and in the next one regarding mathematical concepts. What is important is not the age at which each child arrives at a particular stage but that the stages follow an unvarying sequence.
In her book, Bringing Up Bebe, One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, author Pamela Druckerman tells this account of Piaget's visit to America in the 1960's. " After each talk, someone in the audience typically asked him what he began calling the American Question. It was: how can we speed these stages up? Piaget's answer was: Why would you want to do that? He didn't think that pushing kids to acquire skills ahead of schedule was either possible or desirable. He believed that children reach these milestones at their own speeds driven by their own motors."
I have observed many instances of parents and teachers having this "hurry up and get them ready" schemata. It seems we are always wanting children to speed through the process or perform tasks or have the cognitive process to leap ahead and be "ready" . I'm not always sure just exactly what it is that they are getting "ready" for, however.
As I was visiting in a classroom of young two year olds, the director of the facility brought a couple and their daughter to meet the teachers and see the classroom before the child started her first day with the group. The children were playing with play dough (which they had helped make), playing in the house area, and having their hands and feet painted to secure hand and foot prints to use in the construction of Mother's Day cards. The father looked around the classroom and asked, "well, do you teach any lessons?". To the teacher's credit, she looked a little taken aback and then said, "yes, in fact they are learning colors and shapes now with the play dough". The dad, I am sad to say, did not look all that impressed.
I wonder exactly what lessons he was talking about.
That's all for now.
Check back again!
Information about Piaget was taken from A Piaget Primer, How a Child Thinks authored by Dorothy G. Singer and Tracey A. Revenson.
That's not to say that others won't find it fascinating, I'm just saying that parents and teachers might find some "sage" advice.
To start, I once heard the definition of an expert is: "a person with a briefcase, at least 50 miles from home". I don't claim to be an "expert", but I am confident in my knowledge of child development and can identify developmentally appropriate practice when I see it. I feel this allows me to present some thoughts for you to think about and invite you to take what you will from these thoughts.
So today's post is the first one regarding children's development and what children should learn that will benefit them throughout their life. It seems that parents and teachers often feel that young children must be getting "ready" for the next step or skill or concept.
Jean Piaget, the eminent Swiss psychologist, examined how a child develops play, language, logic, time, space, and number concepts throughout his long career and wrote many volumes on the ways in which a child learns to understand the world.
Piaget's theory is centered on cognitive development. Piaget believed children learn through doing. The world was not just observed and imitated, but interpreted. Piaget conceived of development as a sequence of stages through which all children pass in order to achieve an adult level of intellectual functioning. Later stages evolve from and are built on earlier ones.
During a transitional period, a child may be in one stage regarding language and in the next one regarding mathematical concepts. What is important is not the age at which each child arrives at a particular stage but that the stages follow an unvarying sequence.
In her book, Bringing Up Bebe, One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, author Pamela Druckerman tells this account of Piaget's visit to America in the 1960's. " After each talk, someone in the audience typically asked him what he began calling the American Question. It was: how can we speed these stages up? Piaget's answer was: Why would you want to do that? He didn't think that pushing kids to acquire skills ahead of schedule was either possible or desirable. He believed that children reach these milestones at their own speeds driven by their own motors."
I have observed many instances of parents and teachers having this "hurry up and get them ready" schemata. It seems we are always wanting children to speed through the process or perform tasks or have the cognitive process to leap ahead and be "ready" . I'm not always sure just exactly what it is that they are getting "ready" for, however.
As I was visiting in a classroom of young two year olds, the director of the facility brought a couple and their daughter to meet the teachers and see the classroom before the child started her first day with the group. The children were playing with play dough (which they had helped make), playing in the house area, and having their hands and feet painted to secure hand and foot prints to use in the construction of Mother's Day cards. The father looked around the classroom and asked, "well, do you teach any lessons?". To the teacher's credit, she looked a little taken aback and then said, "yes, in fact they are learning colors and shapes now with the play dough". The dad, I am sad to say, did not look all that impressed.
I wonder exactly what lessons he was talking about.
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.Leo Buscaglia (author, educator).
That's all for now.
Check back again!
Information about Piaget was taken from A Piaget Primer, How a Child Thinks authored by Dorothy G. Singer and Tracey A. Revenson.
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