Has Piaget got the Key?

Piaget's idea that there are four main steps of cognitive growth has been criticized for suggesting that development has an endpoint rather than being a life-long process (Riddle). The question has also been raised whether children actually go through the stages in precisely the way Piaget suggests (Silverthorn). The sensorimotor stage goes from 0-2 years, but by 22 months my son spoke in paragraphs rather than sentences; during the preoperational stage (2-6/7) he was not egocentric, but very perceptive of others' feelings, and at 6 he wanted me to read him Lord of the Rings because an older friend had read it - and he enjoyed and understood it. I am not alone in thinking that Piaget underrates the intelligence of children as this discussion paper shows (http://intranet.yorkcollege.ac.uk/yc/new/HUMSOC/psycho/unit4/piaget.pdf), but probably I am oversimplifying here: Piaget says, in response to Vygotsky's criticisms, that 'Cognitive egocentrism... stems from a lack of differentiation between one’s own point of view and the other possible ones, and not at all from an individualism that precedes relations with others.' Certainly, after thirty-four years of teaching, I still need need to heed his warning that 'every beginning instructor discovers... that his first lectures were incomprehensible because he was talking to himself... He realizes only... with difficulty that it is not easy to place oneself in the shoes of students who do not yet know what he knows about the subject'.

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/piaget.htm). I do like Piaget's idea of equilibration (Silverthorn): I am continually fnding that one mode of thought is not sufficently satisfying, and searching for a newer understanding - particularly in my own writing.

Certainly I agree with Piaget's followers that learning should include activity, peer interaction and Socratic dialogue (Silverthorn, citing Driscoll). But rather than conceiving the educational process as a series of steps, I would picture it as unlocking a door so that the student can enter his or her own interior landscape and embark on a life-long process of discovery.