Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental theorist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development, and his epistemological view called "genetic epistemology." In 1955, he created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and directed it until his death in 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget was "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."
أعجبني القياس الذي ساقه و يشرح فيه الطريقة الأمثل لتعليم الطلاب حس الوطنية . تساءل : هل الطريقة الأفضل لإنتاج طلاب يكونون مواطنين صالحين هي أن نعطيهم عدد معين من الساعات كل عام لندرسهم بشكل آلي منهج "الواجبات الوطنية" و نشرح لهم الآليات المختلفة في الوطن ؟ أم بأن ندربهم عمليا على تنمية حس مراقبة النفس في نظام المدرسة بما يسمح لهم بالمرور بتجربة الالتزام بالبيئة المحيطة و ما تتطلبه من أنظمة و قوانين ؟
"The main idea is that kindergarten for underprivileged children should offer them ethically and intellectually stimulating surroundings in which the atmosphere and above all the abundant and diversified material employed will compensate for the shortcomings of their family life and arouse their curiosity and energies." (p. 5)
"It appears that in order to bring education into line with the needs of society, it would be necessary to undertake a complete revision of the methods and aims of education, rather than continue to be satisfied with simple appeals to common sense." (p. 12)
"To understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery." (p. 20)
"What is needed at both the university and secondary level are teachers who indeed know their subject but who approach it from a constantly interdisciplinary point of view --i.e., knowing how to give general significance to the structures they use and to reintegrate them into over-all systems embracing the other disciplines." (pp. 29-30)
"The internal evolution of a person (according to aptitudes of each one) only provides merely a certain amount of rough outlines that are capable of being developed, destroyed, or left in an untouched state. But these are only rough outlines, and only social and educational interactions will transform them into efficient behavioral patterns or destroy them totally." (p. 55)
"Something that is very surprising if the fact that everyone is convinced ... that to teach mathematics correctly it is enough to know it without having to be concerned with the way in which the ideas are established in the child's mind." (p. 97)