Howard Gardner: "Five Minds for the Future"

I have recently had the pleasure to read "Five Minds for the Future" by Howard Gardner, a professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. His book, "Multiple Intelligences" was featured on one of my previous posts.

In the "Five Minds," Howard Gardner addresses the need to cultivate the minds of tomorrow in this age of technology and globalization. He lists the five minds as follows:

1. The Disciplined Mind
2. The Synthesizing Mind
3. The Creating Mind
4. The Respectful mind
   
5. The Ethical Mind

He takes each of the five minds and discusses them at length, including the challenges that we face as we look at the future of education.

And why do we need to take a proactive stance? Gardner begins by pointing to the following facts:

• Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks.
• Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters.
• Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who do have the creative spark.
• Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons.
• Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet.

Reading this book, I could not help but recall a recent TED video about the rapid progress of science and technology that will cause what the speaker, Juan Enriquez, calls the big "reboot":



Now... my take on all this?

I think if (that's a big if) we, as a global community, can achieve the delicate balance across the elements listed in the book, perhaps humanity still has a chance at a bright future. There's a lot of think about...

"Multiple Intelligences" by Howard Gardner

From the book Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons by Howard Gardner:

I believe that in our society we suffer from three biases, which I have nicknamed "Westist," "Testist," and "Bestist." "Westist" involves putting certain Western cultural values, which date back to Socrates, on a pedestal. Logical thinking, for example, is important; rationality is important; but they are not the only virtues.

"Testist" suggests a bias towards focusing on those human abilities or approaches that are readily testable. If it can't be tested, it sometimes seems, it is not worth paying attention to. My feeling is that assessment can be much broader, much more humane than it is now and that psychologists should spend less time ranking people and more time trying to help them.

"Bestist" is a thinly veiled reference to David Halberstam's 1972 book The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam's title referred ironically to the figures, among them Harvard faculty members, who were brought to Washington to help President John F. Kennedy and in the process launched the Vietnam War. I think any belief that all the answers to a given problem like in one certain approach, such as logical-mathematical thinking, can be very dangerous. current views of intellect need to be leavened with other, more comprehensive points of view.

When he refers to assessments in the second paragraph above, he's referring to tests such as IQ and the SAT.

He proposes an individual-centered learning environment that takes the multifaceted view of intelligence, based on findings from the cognitive science and neuroscience.

I see Jung written all over the cognitive portion of it, don't you?

Gardner's theory began with seven very different but equally important intelligences:

• Musical Intelligence
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
• Linguistic Intelligence
• Spatial Intelligence
• Interpersonal Intelligence
• Intrapersonal Intelligence

He later added an eighth:

• Naturalist Intelligence

He also looked at a ninth intelligence, calling it Existential Intelligence (has to do with the spiritual and the big questions of life), but did not have conclusive findings. (yet!) ;-)