Each Time One Prematurely Teaches A Child

The Need To Speak The Truth And Even To Seek It For Oneself Is Only Conceivable In So Far As The Individual Thinks And Acts As One Of A Society, And Not Of Any Society (for It Is Just The Constraining Relations Between Superior And Inferior That Often Drive The Latter To Prevarication) But Of A Society Founded On Reciprocity And Mutual Respect, And Therefore On Cooperation.

Our Problem, From The Point Of View Of Psychology And From The Point Of View Of Genetic Epistemology, Is To Explain How The Transition Is Made From A Lower Level Of Knowledge To A Level That Is Judged To Be Higher.

To Understand Is To Invent.

Children Have Real Understanding Only Of That Which They Invent Themselves, And Each Time That We Try To Teach Them Too Quickly, We Keep Them From Reinventing It Themselves.

The Discussion Of The Game Of Marbles Seems To Have Led Us Into Rather Deep Waters. But In The Eyes Of Children The History Of The Game Of Marbles Has Quite As Much Importance As The History Of Religion Or Of Forms Of Government. It Is A History, Moreover, That Is Magnificently Spontaneous; And It Was Therefore Perhaps Not Entirely Useless To Seek To Throw Light On The Child's Judgment Of Moral Value By A Preliminary Study Of The Social Behaviour Of Children Amongst Themselves.