Piaget for Beginners

Writers & Readers Documentary Comic Book

by Adriana Serulnikov, Rodrigo Suárez (Illustrator)

This book explores the key moments of Piaget's life and the landmarks of his personal and professional development that culminated in his seminal theory of genetic psychology.

Genres: Psychology

Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

Reviews

[Andrés · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hesitated to give this 5, but there is no 4.5 and I think that this is better than 4. I finished it today and have begun re-reading it.

I picked this up to explore, at least in part, why the controversial clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has talked about Piaget so often. And now I see why. I will do a more thorough review after my 2nd read, which I began this evening. The ideas are big enough that a single read will not suffice.

And then I will likely find myself looking for one of Piaget's books as opposed to this book, which appears to be a good summary. I say 'appears to be' because without having read Piaget I have no way of understanding if it is a good summary or not. (But I was surprised at the high quality of this publisher's summary of Jung, with whom I am very familiar, and so am open to the possibility that it is reasonably good. And I write this before having looked at anyone else's review.)

2nd read. The second read enriched the first, even in this 'easy' beginner's introduction. Piaget is interesting. As mentioned, I see why Peterson talks about Piaget as he does: Piaget took a clearly scientific approach and observed without pre-judgment in an effort to learn, rather than confirm preconceived scientific ideologies about the human behaviour of child development and learning. And I understand why he is not very popular and easily misunderstood and mis-applied. He is likely not popular in 'proper' scientific circles because he openly worked from the perspective of the spiritual aspect of the physical/biological and knowledge.

It was on one of those summer afternoons that I had an intense revelation the clarity of which made me almost ecstatic: God equals Life and the explanation of all things (including the spiritual) lies in biology. A little later, a conviction came to me which led me towards my ultimate goal. 'Faith as the problem — Biology'; 'Knowledge as the problem — Knowledge'. What is the link? And [this] question which was immediately raised, gave the following answer: PSYCHOLOGY. That was when my adolescent dreams led me towards a fixed horizon: I would dedicate my life to the bio-logic of knowledge (p10).

Who in the North American science of the last half century or more would dare associate their scientific study with a spiritual element? And yet, somehow, I came away from reading this book with the feeling/understanding that a balanced connection to 'spirit' makes the science more human than the science that disregards the connection between mind(knowledge) and spirit and body. (This has a small synchronicity with my reading and reviewing How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer, the great Montaigne biograpy by Sarah Bakewell. Montaigne likewise wrote from the perspective of life having spirit. His arguments, grounded from that humbling perspective, have an intensity of 'scientific' realism that is refreshing despite having been written by a devout Catholic in 16th century France. I wonder if that may, in part, explain why he too is not all that popular in our time of a dispirited/de-spirited 'reality'.)

From this short introduction to Piaget I see no indication that his belief that God equals Life and the explanation of all things (including the spiritual) lies in biology betrayed the true scientific nature of his approach or observations. Nor was he imprisoned to see the world in any particular way because of ideology, be that of 'science' or 'spirituality'. Or philosophy. Piaget would never hesitate to define himself as a scientific epistemologist. For philosophers, he is an aberrant philosopher, because he tries to verify by experiment a subject traditionally reserved for philosophic speculation (p120). He was curious and open to observe, experiment, observe, and allow those observations to begin ever new questioning and openness to what might be.

In December 2019, after looking in used book stores for Piaget since my reading the introduction this summer, I eventually found a nice little book by him called The Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child . The find was another perfect synchronicity with my finishing my book review of Bakewell's biography of Montaigne. In the review I cite Montaigne's opinion on the 'proper' or optimal means of educating children. Montaigne writes that

Learning should be a pleasure, and children should grow up to imagine wisdom with a smiling face, not a fierce and terrifying one. He fulminates against the brutal methods of most schools. 'Away with violence and compulsion!' If you enter a school in lesson time’, he says, 'you hear nothing but cries, both from the tortured boys and from the masters drunk with rage.' All this achieves is to put children off from learning for life (Bakewell p57-58).

It was a couple of hours after typing that quotation out that I found and I purchased The science of Education and read from the back cover:

Piaget attacks current teaching methods, which he compares to ‘force-feeding,’ accusing teachers of using an archaic educational approach and of not being concerned with the mental and emotional development of the child.

I have many yellow stickies tabbing the book. Here's one: Piaget has an interesting idea of what constitutes thought:

So how are effective [real world] actions and thought (internalized actions) different? Thought originates with real, effective action, with contact with things and when it becomes abstract thought, it doesn't lose its essential quality, it is still action. But what is thought? [It is not:] A succession of images; Any representation; A chain of association. [It is:] An act of solidarity with others; Together they constitute a system. The specific quality of thought is its reversibility (p149)

Curious. I'm not sure that I have thought about what a thought is before, except as something that is deemed unnecessary in 'proper' meditation, as they are ubiquitous. And I don't know how my thought or feeling is about this definition, but it has got me thinking about thoughts in a way I haven't before. And this little book had me thinking about many things around learning I hadn't thought before. Piaget for Beginners is a very good read.

[Dana Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is almost entirely about his philosophical ideas and only discusses his famous stages in the last chapter. It's not what you'd expect, but this a great book about Piaget's ideas.