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
I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a disdain for escapism and an appreciation for reality, linked to personal experiences with mental health.
Jean Piaget reflects on his aversion to detachment from reality, drawing a connection to his mother's struggles with mental health. This suggests that his understanding of reality has been shaped by witnessing the consequences of mental health issues, leading him to value authenticity and truth over illusions or escapism.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a mental health awareness event to highlight the importance of confronting reality.
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.
Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.
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.
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.
Play is the work of childhood.
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.
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' --or else not.
The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
We have become dangerously comfortable- believers ooze with wealth and let their addictions to comfort and security numb the radical urgency of the gospel.
People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives.
We often think of choice as a thing. But a choice is not a thing. Our options may be things, but a choiceβa choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do.
I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.
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