12 Quotes from Lev Vygotsky About Childhood
There are many authors who, over the years, have focused on the study of children’s psychological development and education, formulating multiple theories in this regard. Some of the most important were Piaget, Bandura, Bruner, Erikson and Vygotsky. Do these names sound familiar to you? You should know them! In this article, we’ll review various quotes from Lev Vygotsky.
His famous phrases will not only help us understand his point of view better, but also his explanations on evolutionary development and the learning process during childhood.
Who was Vygotsky and what were his ideas about childhood?
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was an important Russian psychologist who was born in 1896 and died in 1934, when he was just 37 years old. Despite his short life, he left us many contributions on different topics regarding children’s psychology, education and development. Thus, his focus was on the study of:
- Relationship between learning and social interaction with the environment.
- Importance of playing during childhood.
- Sociocognitive development in early childhood.
- Appearance of language and communication.
- Construction of written language.
According to this author, evolutionary development is the result of an interaction process between children and their environment; this includes their family, social surroundings, and cultural environment. Therefore, social relationships are essential for the acquisition and mastery of different knowledge, skills and intellectual capacities.
Additionally, Vygotsky states that children also form and consolidate their thoughts, attitudes, and values based on what they observe in their interactions with the world.
All of Lev Vygotsky’s ideas and thoughts that we’ve mentioned so far are collected in some of his famous phrases about child psychology, education, learning and development. Up next, we’ll show you 12 of these phrases. Read them carefully!
12 quotes from Lev Vygotsky about childhood
- “Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children access the intellectual life of those around them.”
- “What children can do with the help of others may, in a sense, be even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone.”
- “What a child can do today with help, he’ll be able to do on his own tomorrow.”
- “While at play, a child always behaves beyond his age, above his daily behavior; in play, it’s as though he were a head taller than himself.”
- “Every function present in the child’s cultural development appears twice or in two different planes. First, on the social level, and later, on the psychological level. In principle, it appears between people and as an interpsychological category, to later appear in the child (the subject of learning) as an intrapsychological category.”
- “The true direction of the development of thought is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.”
- “Learning is like a tower, you have to build it step by step.”
- “Educational agents can facilitate learning, but the student must build it.”
- If we give students the opportunity to talk with others, we give them frames to think for themselves.”
- “From the future’s perspective, pedagogy is an immense source of possibilities in the formation of man and his future.”
- “Learning is more than acquiring the ability to think; it’s the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a great variety of things.”
- “Games are a changing reality and, above all, it drives the mental development of the child.”
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Carrera, B. y Mazzarella, C. (2001). Vygotsky: enfoque sociocultural. Educere, 5(13), 41-44.
