The Learning Child

Hailed as a classic in developmental psychology, The Learning Child is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1972, if not more so. Drawing on the findings of psychologists like Piaget, and on the author's own experiences teaching child development at New York’s Bank Street College, Cohen explores the crucial links between learning and the successive stages of childhood, and shows parents and teachers how to turn a child’s natural instinct for inquiry into a talent for learning that will last a lifetime.
 
“If American parents will read and listen to Dr. Cohen’s sensible, wise analysis of the way young children learn, my faith in human beings will be restored! . . . It was refreshing and reassuring to read a book by someone who approaches childhood with love and profound wisdom.” —Eda LeShan, author of When Your Child Drives You Crazy"If American parents will read and listen to Dr. Cohen's sensible, wise analysis of the way young children learn, my faith in human beings will be restored! . . . It was refreshing and reassuring to read a book by someone who approaches childhood with love and profound wisdom."
—Eda LeShan, author of When Your Child Drives You CrazyDOROTHY COHEN was a brilliant teacher, a prolific writer, and an internationally known educator whose books The Learning Child, Kindergarten and Early Schooling, and, with Virginia Stern, Observing and Recording the Behaviour of Young Children are classics in the fields of child development and education. She traveled widely in the United States and abroad and was a frequent public speaker on behalf of the political and social principles that were her life-long passion.

Dr. Cohen was a Bank Street student in the 1930s, then studied at Teacher's College and New York University, where she received her doctorate. She returned to Bank Street College in the 1960s as a member of the graduate faculty, advising, teaching, and writing until her death in 1979.

Throughout her professional career Dorothy Cohen inspired and encouraged generations of graduate students, teachers, parents, daycare workers, and colleagues to participate with her in broadening the notion of education, to, in her own words, "safeguard the humanness of our children."