To this point, I’ve been writing as though Piaget was the first
person to notice cognitive development. Nonsense. The ancient
Egyptians sent boys to learn to be scribes at 7.
To this point, I’ve been writing as though Piaget was the first person to notice cognitive development. Nonsense. The ancient Egyptians sent boys to learn to be scribes at 7. The Spartans took boys away from their mothers at 7, to live in military barracks and learn how to be warriors. At 7, Roman boys began school, escorted by their pedagogues. At 7, the sons of medieval lords and ladies journeyed to begin learning chivalry in neighboring castles as pages. At 7, the students of the classical Scholastics began to learn the first branch of the Trivium: Grammar. At 7, the sons of the guildmasters were apprenticed to learn a trade.
Mere coincidence? I think not. Many cultures have noticed that at age 7, a child is ready to begin learning the rudiments of his civilization. I say rudiments because there still a few things which most children age 9 cannot learn, but which they will learn with ease at 14.
In this stage, which Piaget dubbed the stage of concrete operations, and medieval Scholastics called the grammar stage, and Dorothy Sawyers, in her marvelous essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” named the Poll-Parrot stage, the child memorizes data with the greatest of ease: multiplication tables, historical dates, baseball statistics, foreign language vocabulary.
At this stage, a student not only can memorize the multiplication tables, she can enjoy mastering the multiplication tables. Modern-day educrats who decry “drill and kill” are depriving children of the times tables they will need to do algebra later, and of the historical dates and scientific facts they need to make wise decisions later.
This stage is called “concrete” for a reason: the student thinks more easily about physical items. Give them seven apples or Cuisinaire rods to count, they are happy. Ask them to imagine seven apples, they manage. Ask them to imagine seven percentage points, they lose it.
So teach them about rocks and bugs and weather. Phase out the math manipulatives, and help them memorize those multiplication tables. Read them history as a story, and have them memorize a few dates. Have them write, concentrating on narrative and description.
Toward the end of this stage, children will begin to make original jokes that are actually funny. They will also begin to argue. Depending on their personalities and degree of linguistic talent, they may argue about absolutely everything. By this all men shall know that they have entered the Formal Operations Stage: ages 12 to 15.
In the Middle Ages, the page would become a squire. In the classical tradition, the grammar student would begin the second branch of the Trivium: the dialectic. The apprentice would become a journeyman. The mere acquisition of data is accomplished; the adolescent is ready to learn to reason.
Dorothy Sawyers nicknamed this stage the Pert Stage, because the child likes to argue. Therefore, one can teach him logic, giving him the tools to debate properly and forever afterwards immunizing him from propaganda.
The concrete child mastered arithmetic; the formal operations child is ready for algebra. The concrete child learned dates; the formal child is ready to debate. He is ready for scientific method, for biology, chemistry, and physics. He is ready to parse sentences and analyze compositions and poems and conjugate verbs.
Here ends Piaget’s theory. As far as he was concerned, a 15-year-old was capable of adult thought. Human experience, however, adds one more stage, called in the Scholastic tradition the Rhetoric Stage, the third part of the Trivium: ages 15 to adult.
During the rhetoric stage, the youth has mastered the arts of acquiring and analyzing data, and is ready to begin expressing himself. The student will want to express himself, to define himself as an individual. He may find himself drawn to certain fields. He may be ready to specialize, and to take a greater hand in deciding what to study.
At the end of this period, the squire becomes a knight. The Scholastic writes his thesis and defends himself orally. The journeyman creates a masterpiece and is judged by the guild to be a master craftsman.
In sum, there is a time for acquiring higher order thinking skills. It comes after the acquisition of lower-order thinking skills.
That is what modern educrats have forgotten.
