A Summary of the book

“The language and thought of the

child” (1923)
By: Jean Piaget
 Jean Piaget
• Born in 1896, western Switzerland
• Piaget was son of professor of medieval literature at the local university.
• His strong interest in biology resulted publication of several scientific articles
• In 1917 published a philosophical novel, Recherché.
• After gaining his Ph.D, Piaget began studying child linguistic development
• In 1921 he became director of the institute jean-jacques Rousseau in Geneva.
• From 1925-29 he was professor of psychology, sociology, and the philosophy of
science at university of Neuchatel.
• He returned to the university of Geneva as professor of scientific thought for the
next decade.
• Simultaneously held posts with Swiss education authorities.
• In 1952 piaget became professor of genetic psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
• Until his death in 1980 directed the international center for genetic epistemology
in Geneva.
 Key books
• The child’s conception of the world (1928)
• The moral judgment of the child (1932)
• The origin of intelligence in children (1953)
• Biology and knowledge (1971)
• The grasp of consciousness (1977)
The language and thought of the child
This book is for anyone who has ever wondered how a child
develops language, thought, and knowledge. Before this
classic appeared, little was known of the way children think. In
1923, however, Jean Piaget, the most important developmental
psychologist of the twentieth century, took the psychological
world by storm with The Language and Thought of the Child.
Applying for the first time the insights of social psychology
and psychoanalysis to the observation of children, he
uncovered the ways in which a child actively constructs his or
her understanding of the world through language. The book
has since been a source of inspiration and guidance to
generations of parents and teachers. While its conclusions
remain contentious to this very day, few can deny the huge
debt we owe to this pioneering work in our continuing
attempts to understand the minds of the child
 Introduction

• Jean piaget was a master of natural world observation before he turned his mind to
human matters.
• He learnt in these years-to observe first and classify later-set him up well for examining
the subject of child thought, which had attracted plenty of theories but not a great deal
of solid observation of actual children.
• He decided to focus on very down-to-earth issues such as: “why does a child talk and
who is he/she talking to?” and “why does she ask so many questions”
• If there were answers, he knew they could benefit teachers greatly, and it was for
educators mainly that he wrote The language and thought of the child.
• most explorer of the child mind had focused on quantitative nature of child psychology-
children were thought to be how they are because they have fewer mental abilities
than adults and commit more errors.
• But piaget believed that it was not a matter of children having less or more of
something, they are fundamentally different in the way they think.
• Communication problems exist between adults and children not because of gap in
information, but due to quite different ways of seeing themselves within their worlds.
 Focus of the book:
why a child talks
• In opening pages, Piaget asked what he admitted was a strange question:
“ what are the needs which a child tends to satisfy when he talks?
• Any sane person would say that the purpose of language is to communicate with
others, but if this were the case , he wondered why children talk when there is no
one around, and why even talk to themselves, whether internally or muttering
aloud, it was clear that language could not be reduced to the one function of
simply communicating thought.
• Piaget conducted his research at the Rousseau Institute in Geneva, opened in 1912
for the study of child and teacher training. There he observed children of four and
six, taking down everything they said while they worked and played, and the book
includes transcripts of their “ conversations”
• And what he discovered is that when a children speak, a lot of the time they are
not talking to anyone in particular. They are thinking aloud.
• He identified two types of speech:
1) egocentric 2) socialized
 Continued…
• With in the egocentric type were three pattern :
1) Repetition- speech not directed to people, saying words for the simple
pleasure of it.
2) Monologue- whole commentaries that follows the child’s actions or
play.
3) collective monologue- when children are talking apparently together,
yet are not taking account of what the others are saying.
• He noted that until a certain age ( 7 years), children have no “ verbal
continence” but must say anything that comes into their head.
• He wrote, “A kindergarten or nursery is a society in which, strictly
speaking, individual and social life are not differentiated”.
How children think
1. Believe themselves to the center of
universe, there is no need of the idea of
privacy or withholding views out of
sensitivity to others
How adult think
1. Due to comparative lack of egocentricity ,
have adapted to a fully socialized speech
pattern in which many things are left
unsaid.

2. Their language involves gestures, 2. An adult’s greater mastery of language,

movements and sounds. As these are not the more likely they are to be able or at
words, they cannot express everything, so least aware of , the views of others
children must remain partly a prison of their
own mind

language , in fact takes people beyond themselves, which is why

human culture puts such stress on teaching it to children- it enables
them to eventually move out of the egocentric thinking.
Different thinking, Different worlds
Piaget borrowed a distinction from psychoanalysis
between two types of thought :
Directed or intelligent thought
Undirected or autistic thought
e.g water
This distinction helped Piaget appreciate the development of
children’s thought up to the age of 11. from 3-7 children are
largely egocentric and have elements of autistic thought, but
from 7-11 egocentric logic makes way for perceptual
intelligence
• Piaget noticed that children think in terms of
“schemas” which allow them to focus on the
whole of a message without having to make a
sense of every details.
• He noted that trend in mental development is
always from syncretic to analytical
 Child logic
• Piaget wondered why children, particularly those under 7,
fantasize and dream and use their imagination so much.
• He observed that because they do not engage in deductive
or analytical thought, there is no reason to make a firm
demarcation between “ the real” and “the not real”. As
there minds do not work in terms of causality and
evidence, everything seems possible.
• When a child asks “what would happen if I were an angel?”
to an adult the question is not worth pursuing because we
know it can’t be real. But for a child anything is not only
possible, it is explainable, since no objective logic is
required. To satisfy their mind all that is required is
motivation.
• In later writing, Piaget explored the final
mental development, beginning at the age of
11 or 12. teenagers abilities to reason, think
abstractly, make judgments, and consider
future possibilities make them essentially the
same as adults. From this point on it is a
matter of increases in ability rather than
qualitative changes.
 conclusion
• Piaget’s stages of child development have his
impact on pre-school and school education
has been great.
• His observation of children led to broader
theories on communication and cognition.
• Piaget invented the field of “genetic
epistemology,” which means how theories of
knowledge evolve or change in relation to new
information.
• Piaget wryly observed, a child’s world seems
to work so well that, according to their
understanding, logic is not required to support
it.
• Adult often find it difficult to understand
children because they have forgotten that
logic plays no role in child’s mind. We cannot
make children think in the same way as us
before they reach a certain age.
• Piaget was ahead of his time in suggesting that
we should educate people to be innovative and
inventive thinkers who are aware of the
subjectivity of their own minds, yet mature
enough to accommodate new facts.
• His initial experiments observing the language
and thought of the child, therefore, led to great
insights into how adults process knowledge and
create new understanding.