<Pg 18>

<Rik:>
Vygotsky (Russian) and Piaget (French) were the pioneers in studying children's
cognitive process from the view of them being "developing adults" as opposed to
the very chauvinistic, Victorian type view that "children thought like primitive
people and women" !!!
Vygotsky was persecuted by the Bolshevists for his views, and Piaget lauded by t
he French Academia.
This is an extract from the Vygotsky legacy.
</>
Vygotsky saw that grown-ups play a crucial role in what children know. For most
of us immersed in the practical job of child-rearing, that seems obvious. Our ow
n presence seems self-evidently to be the most determining [sic] factor in our c
hildren's lives, for good or ill. ... But the enormous fact of our relation to
our children gives us a limited and inaccurate view of them, just as overpowerin
g romantic love, which is the best analogy to parenthood for most of us, blinds
us to the true character of our lovers and love itself. When you read Piaget's
diaries, that huge, adoring parental ego is trikingly, even spookily, absent. ..
. Vygotsky saw that adults, and especially parents, were a kind of tool that chi
ldren used to solve the problem of knowledge ... and children used adults to dis
cover the particularities of their culture and society.

</Pg 18>