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Why did Piaget believe that younger children need concrete and active learning experiences?

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Fragment of a Roman fresco showing Socrates seated and draped in a white robe, with Greek text above, on a red background with visible cracks. — Philosophy of education Socrates, Roman fresco, 1st century bce; in the Ephesus Museum, Selçuk, Turkey.

Jean Piaget believed that younger children require concrete and active learning experiences because their cognitive development progresses through a genetically determined timetable of stages. During the early stages of development, such as the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage, children lack the capacity for the abstract, logical, and hypothetical reasoning that characterizes the later formal operational stage.12

Because young children are in the process of creating and re-creating their own models of reality, they must assimilate new information into existing cognitive structures or accommodate those structures to fit new experiences. Piaget argued that simple reinforcement is insufficient for learning; instead, children must actively manipulate their environment and engage in physical exploration to build these mental representations. Consequently, educators should act as guides who facilitate a child's own discovery of the world, ensuring that instruction is tuned to the child's current stage of development rather than forcing abstract concepts before the child is cognitively prepared to grasp them.213