"The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done"
About this Quote
The key move is the contrast between “doing new things” and “repeating what other generations have done.” Piaget isn’t attacking tradition so much as the unthinking transmission of it. The subtext is that rote learning produces compliant adults who can recite answers without understanding the machinery behind them. In a century defined by mass schooling, bureaucratic standards, and industrial efficiency, that’s a radical pivot: treat students not as storage devices but as authors of hypotheses.
Context matters. Piaget developed his theories while watching children fail “simple” tasks in ways that revealed sophisticated internal logic. Those observations turned into constructivism: knowledge isn’t poured in; it’s built. So when he says the goal is to create people “capable of doing new things,” he’s gesturing at autonomy, intellectual risk-taking, and the ability to reframe problems when the old scripts stop working.
There’s also an implicit civic warning. A society that trains citizens to echo prior generations becomes fragile in the face of new technology, new politics, new crises. Piaget’s ideal graduate isn’t just employable; they’re adaptable, skeptical, and equipped to challenge inherited answers rather than worship them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Piaget, Jean. (2026, January 17). The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-principle-goal-of-education-in-the-schools-70263/
Chicago Style
Piaget, Jean. "The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-principle-goal-of-education-in-the-schools-70263/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-principle-goal-of-education-in-the-schools-70263/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
