Piaget's Logic of Assimilation and Logic for the Classroom

The purpose of this chapter is twofold: On the theoretical side, a plea is made for a balanced understanding of the place of logic in Piaget’s theory and, beyond that, in a school that aims to foster creative thinking. On the practical side, it describes an educational computer program for exercising logical thinking, namely, Symbol Picture Logic (SPL), suitable for children who have achieved their first logical operations—Piaget’s “concrete operations,” and the concluding section discusses the advantages of setting SPL in a computer microworld. Perhaps paradoxically to many, the advantages cited are related to the implicit social-interpersonal as much as to the explicity graphic and electronic context.