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 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education should empower children to innovate and explore, rather than just accumulating knowledge.
Jean Piaget emphasizes that the primary aim of education is not merely to fill students with information, but to inspire and enable them to think creatively and engage in discovery. By fostering an environment where children can invent and try new things, education cultivates individuals who can contribute uniquely to society, rather than just replicate existing knowledge.
Themes
EducationCreativityInnovationChild DevelopmentLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about modern education, this quote can emphasize the importance of creativity in teaching.
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
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators...not conformists
Jean PiagetRead
Similar quotes
The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.
Steven LevittRead
When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.
Abdul KalamRead
We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex.
Abraham FlexnerRead
I speak as a man of the world to men of the world; and I say to you, Search the Scriptures! The Bible is the book of all others, to be read at all ages, and in all conditions of human life; not to be read once or twice or thrice through, and then laid aside, but to be read in small portions of one or two chapters every day, and never to be intermitted, unless by some overruling necessity.
John Quincy AdamsRead
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Leonardo Da VinciRead
Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead