Jean vs. Lev

        Jean Piaget makes some pretty good ball-park estimates in his 4-stage theory of cognitive development. Infants tend to be hands-on, with little understanding of anything and therefore a tendency to experience separation anxiety. Toddlers, and kids ages 2-6 are prone to be egocentric and often fail to understand conservation. In the same way he makes generally accurate assumptions about development between the next pivotal transition times for kids, but his theory stops suddenly at the formal operational thinking stage ("12 years and up"). While I agree with this to an extent, Lev Vygotsky presents some resolutions to some of the questions that Piaget's theory failed to address.
        One thing I appreciate about Vygotsky's theories is the way they emphasize the importance of society and culture. Piaget's basis for his study was more or less limited to his own kids, who grew up under his roof in a specific culture and community. These controlled situations hardly leave room for culture diversity to be analyzed and included in his stages of cognitive development. In some countries, kids learn concrete operational thinking skills at a younger (or later) age than what Piaget observed with his kids. Additionally, Vygotsky's basic assumption involving both "informal conversations" and "formal schooling" in the process of relaying a culture's interpretation on the world seems to me a realistic assumption to make about child development, more so than sweeping generalizations on age.