Alison Gopnik Quotes

Children love this idea that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger as they use it.

What will a child learn sooner than a song?

Play is the work of children. It's very serious stuff.

Play reaches the habits most needed for intellectual growth.

Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

I think kids slowly begin to realize that what they're learning relates to other things they know. Then learning starts to get more and more exciting.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

Some people say video games rot your brain, but I think they work different muscles that maybe you don't normally use.

Early childhood education begins early, even before birth.

If you put a baseball and other toys in front of a baby, he'll pick up a baseball in preference to the others.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

I think much of what you learn as a kid comes before age seven.

Learning is not just a labour market or economic growth issue. It is an integral part of human development. We learn from birth to death.

Physical development fosters learning.

Children are just little scientists.

The development of a child is guaranteed in his curiosity to discover the cause behind each and every incident.

There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

A small boy puts his hand on the wall, and looks down intently as he wriggles his toes. The birth of thought?