Piaget misunderstood?

I think Piaget is sometimes criticized too harshly. While it is important to critique his theory, and to fine-tune it, it is also important to realize that he was also right on a lot of accounts. I also think that some of his concepts might have been misinterpreted, which has led people to underestimate him and think that he, in turn, has underestimated what children are capable of.

One of the main pieces of criticism directed at him is that his theory implies cognitive development is qualitative and domain-general. This is, however, a label put on his theory by others, and might not be exactly what he meant. For example, he might not have meant that children miraculously master the concept of conservation on all tasks all at once when they reach the age of six or seven. It was merely his way of providing a benchmark between the preoperational and concrete operational stages – a child is considered concrete operational when they have fully mastered the concept of conservation, which is not the same as saying that children get the concept of conservation when they are concrete operational.
While this categorization can be detrimental, it provides us a general framework in which to work and has many real-life applications. For one, we can tie it in with Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding, and therefore provide children with the encouragement they need to master the tasks we know are within reach at each stage, or age. We know, thanks to Piaget, that it is probably more appropriate to help a two-year-old master the concept of object permanence than to introduce the idea of class inclusion, which would most probably be beyond the child’s experience and mental capacity to handle.

It has to be acknowledged that children develop at different rates, and that there can never be one mould that we can squeeze everyone into. There has been proof that children can master the concepts from a different stage with some help, proving that they are capable. Piaget’s theories therefore do not apply to every single child, but then again no one else’s has or ever will. We must acknowledge, however, the generalizability of Piaget’s theories. It is simple amazing how many times the experiments and results for conservation, A-not-B error, and object permanence, to name a few, have been replicated. This replication can not only be found across variations of the original experiments, but also across cultures and generations. This shows that his “qualitative and domain-general” theories have some truth to it in terms of what children of a specific age group are capable of, if no one specifically trains them on a particular task.

Another major criticism of his theory is that competence is not only demonstrated through performance. One of the main theories discussed in class in illustration of this argument was the A-not-B error. Children are said to have “overcome” this error because they look at the blanket the toy is under, even while reaching for the other blanket under which they initially found the toy the first time. They know, the argument goes, where the toy is, they are simply reaching for the wrong blanket out of habit. As far as I’m concerned, inhibiting this impulse to reach for the wrong blanket and going for the one they know is right is very much part of cognitive development. Until they have inhibited this urge, they have not overcome the A-not-B error, and Piaget is right. Again, it is true that children can be trained, and will get better at it the more they perform the task, but this, as mentioned earlier, is “unnatural”, because under normal circumstances they would not get this much practice in so short a period. At any rate, this observation that children get better at doing something the more they do it is in strong support of Piaget’s overarching concept of the child as a little scientist, learning from trial and error.

In summary, Piaget should be accorded no small amount of respect for his astute observations and theories that he formulated pretty much single-handedly. He could not explain everything, and so his theories are by no means the final word in cognitive development. But rather than being pushed aside and replaced by more contemporary theories, they should be recognized as a firm foundation on which the field of cognitive development can flourish.