Learning happens in the form of development where lower
level cognitive skills are transformed into higher order thinking. In gaining a
greater awareness and consciousness of the world around us, the child, in
becoming an adult, must devalue the ego. “Indeed, when the little child ceases
to relate everything to his states and to his own action, and begins to
substitute for a world of fluctuating tableaux without spatial- temporal
displacements and according to an objectified and spatialized causality, then his
affectivity will also be attached to these localizable permanent objects and
sources of external causality which persons come to be.” (26) the child begins
to interact with the world rather than at the world.
As the child develops this awareness, he or she identifies
with his/her peers no matter what the skin color. And in fact, in diverse
environments, the child may become aware of people whom represent a makeup that
is more in touch with our global landscape, rather than the confines of local neighborhoods.
This awareness allows students to develop heightened forms of critical thinking
and tools that may easily dismantle such social ills as racism. Piaget calls
this awareness perception.
“Perception constitutes a special case of sensori-motor
activity. But its special character consists in the fact that it pictures
reality in its figurative aspect whereas an action as a whole (and even
sensori- motor action) is essentially operative and transforms the real. It is
important, therefore, to determine the relative roles of perceptions and action
(and later operations) in the intellectual development of the child.” (29) How
the child sees the world then becomes the object of developmental intellect,
again reiterating the departure from the ego to the conscious.
It would follow that the more diverse the environment the
broader the students awareness. And that the most appropriate setting for
rigorous dialogue and debate is within this environment. College, or higher
education, must in some way shape or form have an apparatus to create this
environment, and the tool to get there, as of present, is affirmative action.
Case for diversity: “The decentering of cognitive
constructions necessary for the development of the operations is inseparable
from the decentering of affective and social constructions. But the term
‘social’ must not be thought of in the narrow sense of educational, cultural,
or moral transmission alone; rather, it covers interpersonal process of
socialization which is at once cognitive, affective, and moral. This
process may be traced in a broad outline—but we must not forget that the
optimal conditions are in fact unattainable and that this evolution is subject
to considerable fluctuation, teaching both its cognitive and its affective
aspects.” (96)
Affirmative action is a justified means to an admiral end!
The Psychology of the Child, By Jean Piaget and
Barbel Inhelder, published by Basic Books 1969
