Thoughts on Piaget

Piaget is an interesting character. He didn't really study in the education field...he was a psychologist. But he is one of the most influential figures in education, though sometimes for the wrong reasons. For instance, his idea of genetic epistemology is one of his more famous theories, but somehow people lost the point of it. Perhaps it was through bad translations (I speak French and have read both english and french versions of some of his works and there are sometimes some issues in the translations), or people's natural tendency to simplify things. What piaget said was that there were stages in children's cognition that all children go through in the same order no matter what culture they were from. But he never said anything like "Once kids hit their 14th birthdays, they will be able to reason formally." And he never said that when students struggle with something teachers should just throw up their arms and say "my students can't do that because they are in X stage." Rather he said that one should push the limits of students' thinking to help push them to the next stage. Ultimately that is what teachers are in the business of.