Cutting Nature's Leading Strings: A Cautionary Tale About Constructivism

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1787/1983) is precisely such a mythical event, containing precisely such invisible shadows in the ways that it has come down to us. It has become silently epoch making in our ability to imagine the nature and limits of knowledge, especially in the realm of educational theory and practice, and most pointedly in regard to issues of environmental education and ecological awareness and experience. The particular educational import of Kant’s work is manifest, via the work of Jean Piaget, in the now-popular educational idea of “constructivism” and its educational consort, “development.”