This article, translated into Spanish from the French, discusses changes and increasing complications in society which call for educational reform and improvement. Elementary education, traditionally based on memory skills, should become the setting for the development of mental processes and intellectual skills through the activity of problem solving. The child should be led to discover problems, to search for and evaluate solutions, and, finally, to test those solutions. Important for educational reform is the research work of psychologists considering intellectual development and learning processes. (VM)