Many encounters stimulated the growth of this book. Twenty-five years ago, Michael Posner and Bruce McCandliss, then at the University of Oregon, were the first to convince me that cognitive science could be relevant to education. I owe much to the many scientific meetings they organized with the help of Bruno della Chiesa and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the following decade, a wonderful group of South American friends—Marcela Peña, Sidarta Ribeiro, Mariano Sigman, Alejandro Maiche, and Juan Valle Lisboa—took the lead and trained an entire generation of young scientists at the unforgettable annual meetings of the Latin American School for Education, Cognitive and Neural Sciences. I am eternally grateful to them, as well as to the James S. McDonnell Foundation and its leaders, John Bruer and Susan Fitzpatrick, for giving me the chance to participate in all of them.
Another person who shared those stimulating experiences is my wife and colleague, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz. We have been discussing brain development and, incidentally, the education of our children for thirty-two years. It goes without saying that I owe everything to her, including her meticulous reading of the preceding pages.
Another anniversary has gone by: it has been thirty-four years since I joined the laboratories of Jacques Mehler and Jean-Pierre Changeux. Their influence on my thinking is immense, and they will recognize many of their favorite themes in this book—as will other very close colleagues and friends, such as Lucia Braga, Laurent Cohen, Naama Friedmann, Véronique Izard, Régine Kolinsky, José Morais, Lionel Naccache, Christophe Pallier, Mariano Sigman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Josh Tenenbaum.
Thanks also go to my dear friend Antonio Battro, who continually encouraged me to pursue research on mind, brain, and education. I am also grateful to him for introducing me to Nico, an artist with a remarkable personality who very kindly allowed me to reproduce some of his paintings here. Thanks also to Yoshua Bengio, Alain Chédotal, Guillaume and David Dehaene, Molly Dillon, Jessica Dubois, György Gergely, Eric Knudsen, Leah Krubitzer, Bruce McCandliss, Josh Tenenbaum, Fei Xu, and Robert Zatorre for allowing me to reproduce the many figures in this book.
I would also like to thank all the institutions that have supported my research over the years with unfailing loyalty, in particular the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (CEA), Collège de France, Université Paris-Sud, the European Research Council (ERC), and the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation. Thanks to them, I have been able to surround myself with brilliant and energetic students and collaborators. They are too numerous to list here, but they will recognize themselves in the long list of publications that follows. A special mention goes out to Anna Wilson, Dror Dotan, and Cassandra Potier-Watkins, with whom I developed educational software and classroom interventions.
Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French Ministre de l’Education Nationale, honored me with his trust by proposing that I chair his first Scientific Council, an exciting challenge for which I thank him wholeheartedly. I am grateful to all the members of the council, including Esther Duflo, Michel Fayol, Marc Gurgand, Caroline Huron, Elena Pasquinelli, Franck Ramus, Elizabeth Spelke, and Jo Ziegler, and my secretary-general Nelson Vallejo-Gomez, for their commitment and for all they have taught me.
This edition benefited greatly from the critical eye of my editors at Viking: Wendy Wolf and Terezia Cicel. And it wouldn’t have made it into their hands without the ceaseless help of my agents, John and Max at Brockman Inc. Thank you for your constant support and invaluable feedback.
Yallingup, Australia, April 7, 2019