ABSTRACT
We were left at the end of Chapter 2 with the problem of whether or not the accessibility of current curriculum material to the school population could be improved by raising the general intellectual level of students. From a cognitive-developmentalist perspective, this translates as: can we enhance, or accelerate, pupils’ cognitive development? In 1975 Neimark wrote:
One of the more surprising gaps in the reported research concerns what Piaget has called ‘The American Question’: the possibility of accelerating cognitive development through specific training.… When more is known about the course of normal development and the variables which affect it, it is quite likely that sophisticated training research will begin in earnest. Piaget’s prediction would be that all such attempts are doomed to failure.
(pp. 584–5)