# Transcript

David Elkind

Hello, I’m David Elkind and I had the good fortune to study with Piaget in Switzerland at the beginning of my career. In the quarter of a century since that time, I witnessed the way in which Piaget’s teachings have become part of our way of thinking about children and how they grow and how they learn. In this film, we will highlight many of Piaget’s most salient observations and conceptions.

Jean Piaget

Our real problem is: what is the goal of education? Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds, capable of discovery from the preschool age on, throughout life?

David Elkind (voiceover)

At the age of 10 he published his first scientific paper, an observation of an albino sparrow. By the time he was 16, he was so well published that he was offered, sight unseen, the curatorship of a museum. He had to turn down the offer, however, as he hadn’t yet completed high school.

It is the idea that our knowledge about the world grows in stages which parallel our mental growth that makes Piaget’s a truly genetic of his termology. The first two years of life make up the sensory-motor period.

(New case study.)

David Elkind

I’m gonna put them under here, watch me – OK? She wants them and it disappeared, but she doesn’t think to look under the cloth – yes, that’s too bad – OK, OK. Here they are, here they are – see?

(New case study.)

David Elkind

OK, Bridget do you know your right hand and your left hand? No?

Bridget

This is my right one, and this is my left one.

David Elkind

Very good. And can you tell me my left and my right?

Bridget

This is your left and this is your right.

David Elkind

OK. And show me right and your left again.

Bridget

My left and my right.

David Elkind

OK, very good.

David Elkind (voiceover)

As in the first stage of his work, Piaget was able to create tasks that other researchers could use to reveal the great discrepancy between the way in which infants and older children and adults view the world.

(New case study.)

David Elkind

Where is yours? Where’s mine? Now do we both have the same to drink or does one of us have more?

Girl

I do.

(New case study.)

David Elkind

But isn’t this higher than this one? I mean, this is up here and this is way down here – doesn’t that make this one more?

Girl

Well, this one may be taller but this one is more spaced-out

David Elkind

Oh, OK.

David Elkind (voiceover)

The third stage Piaget called ‘concrete operational’ and it emerges between the ages of six or seven at last until the ages 11 or 12. Beginning at about the age 11 or 12, the adolescent period, young people move into the stage of formal operations.

During the last phase of his work – approximately the last two decades before his death in 1980 at age 84 – Piaget dealt with a number of different issues like memory and imagery. It will be the next century before we fully realise the magnificent legacy of Jean Piaget. We hope that this film and other films in this series will enable us to realise this legacy.