QuoteProject
The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done-men who are creative, inventive, and discovers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered.
Jean Piaget
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Education should nurture creativity and critical thinking rather than mere memorization.

Jean Piaget emphasizes that the primary objective of education is to cultivate individuals who are innovative and capable of original thought, rather than just replicating the knowledge of past generations. He asserts a secondary goal of education is to develop critical thinkers who can analyze information and challenge accepted norms, rather than passively accepting them.

Themes

EducationCreativityCritical ThinkingInnovationLearning

In practice

Example use cases

A speaker at a conference on innovative teaching methods might use this quote to emphasize the importance of fostering creativity.

More from Jean Piaget

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
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
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.
Jean PiagetRead

Similar quotes

Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality.
Clint SmithRead
And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art.
John B. S. HaldaneRead
There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.
Stephen AmbroseRead
Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more that all, must be prayed for.
Thomas ArnoldRead
I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.
Margaret MeadRead
There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something.
Eugene H. PetersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.