by Five Minds for the Future outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead.
These 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.
I don’t believe and have never stated that creativity is an innate and un-teachable trait. Quite the opposite. I don’t think that anyone is born creative or non-creative. Whether one inclines toward creativity depends chiefly on the messages in your society: at home, at school, in other organizations, on the street, etc. These messages have to encourage thinking outside of the box, present effective models of such thinking, and, most important, not penalize individuals who take a chance and don’t come up with a winning idea. The biggest killer of creativity is the message that if you try and fail, you had better not try again.
Dr. gardner in an interview with dent.
Gardner draws from a wealth of diverse examples to illuminate these ideas, designed to inspire lifelong learning, and also to provide valuable insights for those charged with training and developing organizational leaders.
Drawing on decades of cognitive research and rich examples from history, politics, business, science, and the arts, Gardner writes for professionals, teachers, parents, political and business leaders, trainers, and all who prize the cognitive skills at a premium for tomorrow.
About Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A recipient of the MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education, the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, and the Brock International Prize in Education, he is a leading thinker of education and human development. He has received honorary degrees from thirty-one colleges and universities. He has studied and written extensively about intelligence, creativity, leadership, and professional ethics, and is senior director of Project Zero and co-founder of The Good Project. For the last several years, he has worked in various capacities with Harvard undergraduates and is now undertaking a study of liberal arts and sciences in the 21st century. Gardner’s books include Good Work; Changing Minds; The Development and Education of the Mind; Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons; Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed; and The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World.
Gardner’s intellectual memoir, A Synthesizing Mind, will be published by MIT Press this month.
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