Harvard education professor, Howard Gardner, has produced a new book, Five Minds for the Future. Gardner gave us the "multiple intelligences" 20 years ago -- a construct that has challenged educators ever since. The notion that intelligence is not a single factor, but that different persons have different intelligences:
- Linguistic Intelligence
- Musical Intelligence
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
- Spatial Intelligence
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Intrapersonal Intelligence
- Naturalist Intelligence
My kids had the privilege of attending a Methodist school in South Africa that actively sought to design their curriculum around the multiple intelligences, unlike the Ontario curriculum they came back to in 2000 that emphasized "the basics," a la Mike Harris: readin, writin, and 'rithmetic.
His new book Five Minds discusses the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead. They include:
- The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of
major schools of thought, including
science, mathematics, and history, and of
at least one professional craft. - The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to
integrate ideas from different disciplines
or spheres into a coherent whole and to
communicate that integration to others. - The Creating Mind: the capacity to
uncover and clarify new problems,
questions and phenomena. - The Respectful Mind: awareness of and
appreciation for differences among
human beings and human groups. - The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's
responsibilities as a worker and as a
citizen.
This article in the Financial Times gives some contextual reflections on the significance of Gardner's thesis.
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