THE DANGER OF "ISMS"

A short commentary on
Piaget and Vygotsky,
included will be "a dusting off" of the old educator Dewey

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He is known to the world as a psychologist, who made a study of how children learn ("aquisition of understanding"). When Jean was ten years old he published an article on his observations of an albino sparrow. He reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci with his ability for observing in a very objective manner the natural world. After his studies in zoology and a doctorate in philosophy 1918, his interests turned to psychology and epistomology. He studied under C.G. Jung in Zurich which leads me to think that he would not approve of using his stages of development to justify bringing a computer into early primary school. Jung had a spiritual dimension to his life's work and both men would surely have evaluated health and safety of the child's soul in relationship to this new medium. Pause a moment and consider how they would react to Michael Leunig's cartoon.



Constructivism is about human beings constructing their own knowledge either as individuals as described by Piaget's stages of development, or socially as put forward by Vygotsky.
In 1923 Piaget wrote The Language and Thought of the Child



The very same year Rudolf Steiner, who was the renowned archivist of Goethe's and Niezsche's work, gave his lectures on The Developing Consciousness of the Child. Both men were in Switzerland at the same time. I would argue that Rudolf Steiner's methodology and curriculum are as relevant in the computer age as it has been for the past 85 years.
And in the 1920s behind the Iron Curtain Vygotsky critiqued Piaget's work:

"In our conception (as opposed to Piaget's),the true development of thinking is not from the individual to the socialised, but from the social to the individual"

L.Vygotsky(1962) Thought and Language. MIT Press:Cambridge

Towards the end of his life Piaget was able to read an English translation of Vygotsky's work. I will quote his words of this experience after we have had a look at Vygotsky.




Lev Vygotsky (1896-1933) born, one of eight children, the same year as Piaget lived his life in communist Russia and was not able to communicate with the West. He developed his epistomology based on social learning.
Even though he has been pitted against Piaget in reality they represent two sides of one coin.
In 1962 Piaget wrote:

"It is not without sadness that an author discovers, twenty-five years after its publication, the work of a colleague who has died in the mean time, when that work contains so many points of immediate interest to him which should have been discussed personally and in detail.....I was never able to read his writings or to meet him in person,and in reading his book today, I regret this profoundly for we could have come to an understanding on a number of points.......on certain points I find myself more in agreement with Vygotsky than I would have been in 1934, while on other points I believe I now have better arguments for answering him"

Piaget, J (1962) Comments on Vygotsky's critical remarks concerning The Language and Thought of the Child, and Judgement and Reasoning in the Child.
Written after reading in manuscript Chapter 2 and excerpts from Chapter 6 of Vygotsky's Thought and Language.

To tie education to a single philosophical position or theory such as constructivism is fraught with danger. When I consider Steiner Education in light of popular theory I see it as a synthesis of constructivism,(Piaget, Vygotsky), objectivism and essentialism. However to find any spiritual depth to education theory I would have to go to Rudolf Steiner himself.
But I would like to conclude my musings with words from My Pedagogic Creed by




John Dewey (1859-1952)

"I beleive that the school, as an institution, should simplify social life: should reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form. Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by the multiplicity of activities which are going on, so that he looses his own power of orderly reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that his powers are prematurely called into play and he becomes unduely specialised or else disinterested".