Jean Piaget was born in 1896 and passed away on 16 September 1980. He attended the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. His first published work came out in 1911 when he was only 15 years old. After graduating, Piaget went to Paris to work with Pierre Janet, Henri Piéron, and Theodore Simon in the laboratories founded by Alfred Binet. Here, he worked with children in the hospital and developed his clinical method of questioning very young children by incorporating clinical psychology and epistemology, logic, and history of the sciences.
Piaget was called to Geneva by Edouard Claparède and Pierre Bovet to work at the Maison des Petits of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute. Piaget worked with children in their “normal” surroundings which allowed him to be dedicated to developing and improving educational systems. Later, he returned to Neuchâtel to replace his former teacher but returned to Geneva when he was invited to become a co-director, with Claparède and Bovet, of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute.
In 1929, Jean Piaget accepted the post of Director of the International Bureau of Education and remained the head of this international organization until 1968. Every year, he drafted his “Director’s Speeches” for the IBE Council and for the International Conference on Public Education in which he explicitly expressed his educational credo. He believed that education was the primary challenge facing all peoples and declared that “only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent or gradual.” Piaget put forward the importance of pupils’ active participation and learning through a trial and error process. He firmly believed in a necessary link between psychology and education.
Jean Piaget left an undeniable stamp on educational practices, especially where early childhood is concerned, contributed to the promotion of movements for the international coordination of education, and continues to influence the educational tasks of today.
