This book is for anyone who has ever wondered how a child develops
language, thought, and knowledge. Before this classic appeared, little
was known of the way children think. In 1923, however, Jean Piaget, the
most important developmental psychologist of the twentieth century, took
the psychological world by storm with The Language and Thought of the
Child. Applying for the first time the insights of social psychology
and psychoanalysis to the observation of children, he uncovered the ways
in which a child actively constructs his or her understanding of the
world through language. The book has since been a source of inspiration
and guidance to generations of parents and teachers. While its
conclusions remain contentious to this very day, few can deny the huge
debt we owe to this pioneering work in our continuing attempts to
understand the minds of the child.