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While We May Continue To Use The Words Smart And Stupid, And While Iq Tests May Persist For Certain Purposes, The Monopoly Of Those Who Believe In A Single General Intelligence Has Come To An End. Brain Scientists And Geneticists Are Documenting The Incredible Differentiation Of Human Capacities, Computer Programmers Are Creating Systems That Are Intelligent In Different Ways, And Educators Are Freshly Acknowledging That Their Students Have Distinctive Strengths And Weaknesses.

-Howard Gardner

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While We May Continue

Howard Gardner

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While We May Continue To Use The Words Smart And Stupid, And While Iq Tests May Persist For Certain Purposes, The Monopoly Of Those Who Believe In A Single General Intelligence Has Come To An End. Brain Scientists And Geneticists Are Documenting The Incredible Differentiation Of Human Capacities, Computer Programmers Are Creating Systems That Are Intelligent In Different Ways, And Educators Are Freshly Acknowledging That Their Students Have Distinctive Strengths And Weaknesses.

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If We Were To Abandon Concern For What Is True, What Is False, And What Remains Indeterminate, The World Would Be Totally Chaotic. Even Those Who Deny The Importance Of Truth, On The One Hand, Are Quick To Jump On Anyone Who Is Caught Lying.

Fundamentalism Is A Kind Of Decision Not To Change Your Mind About Something...many Of Us Are Fundamentalists...because It Worked Pretty Well For Us.

One Must Exploit The Asynchronies That Have Befallen One, Link Them To A Promising Issue Or Domain, Reframe Frustrations As Opportunities, And, Above All, Persevere.

I Think That I Am Strongest In Linguistic And Musical Intelligence, And I Continue To Work On My Interpersonal And Intrapersonal Intelligence.

If I Know You're Very Good In Music, I Can Predict With Just About Zero Accuracy Whether You're Going To Be Good Or Bad In Other Things.

Intelligence Is The Ability To Find And Solve Problems And Create Products Of Value In One's Own Culture.

I Align Myself With Almost All Researchers In Assuming That Anything We Do Is A Composite Of Whatever Genetic Limitations Were Given To Us By Our Parents And Whatever Kinds Of Environmental Opportunities Are Available.

We Need To Focus On The Kind Of Human Beings We Want To Have And The Kind Of Society In Which We Want To Live.

If Confucius Can Serve As The Patron Saint Of Chinese Education, Let Me Propose Socrates As His Equivalent In A Western Educational Context - A Socrates Who Is Never Content With The Initial Superficial Response, But Is Always Probing For Finer Distinctions, Clearer Examples, A More Profound Form Of Knowing. Our Concept Of Knowledge Has Changed Since Classical Times, But Socrates Has Provided Us With A Timeless Educational Goal - Ever Deeper Understanding.

Creativity Begins With An Affinity For Something. It's Like Falling In Love.

Intelligences Are Enhanced When A Person Is Engaged In Activities That Involve The Exercise Of That Intelligence. It Helps To Have Good Teachers, Ample Resources, And Personal Motivation. Anyone Can Improve Any Intelligence; But It Is Easier To Improve The Intelligence If Those Factors Are Available And If You Have High Potential In That Intelligence.

It's Not How Smart You Are That Matters, What Really Counts Is How You Are Smart.

Most People (by The Time They Have Become Adults ) Can't Change Their Minds Because Their Neural Pathways Have Become Set... The Longer Neural Pathways Have Been Running One Way The Harder It Is To Rewire Them.

I Need To Add That My Work On Multiple Intelligences Received A Huge Boost In 1995 When Daniel Goleman Published His Book On Emotional Intelligence. I Am Often Confused With Dan. Initially, Though Dan And I Are Longtime Friends, This Confusion Irritated Me.

There Is No Single Truth, But Each Of The Scholarly Disciplines Has Methods Which Lead One Ever Closer To The Truth.

We Are Natural Mind Changing Entities Until We Are 10 Or So. But As We Get Older...then It Is Very Hard To Change Our Minds

There Are Clear Differences Between Child And Adult Artistic Activity. While The Child May Be Aware That He Is Doing Things Differently From Others, He Does Not Fully Appreciate The Rules And Conventions Of Symbolic Realms; His Adventurousness Holds Little Significance. In Contrast, The Adult Artist Is Fully Cognizant Of The Norms Embraced By Others; His Willingness, His Compulsion, To Reject Convention Is Purchased, At The Very Least, With Full Knowledge Of What He Is Doing And Often At Considerable Psychic Cost To Himself.

If One Develops Good Habits And Routines, It Is Possible To Be A Responsible Educator Most Of The Time; And To Marshal The Special Energies And Reflection For Those Times, When The Correct Course Of Action Is Not Clear, Or When One Is Weighing One Wrong Against Another Wrong.

An Intelligence Is The Biological And Psychological Potential To Analyze Information In Specific Ways, In Order To Solve Problems Or To Create Products That Are Valued In A Culture.

My Belief In Why America Has Been Doing So Well Up To Now Is That We Have Been Propelled By Our Immigrants And Our Encouragement Of Technical Innovation And, Indeed, Creativity Across The Board.

While I’ve Worked On Many Topics And Written Many Books, I Have Not Abandoned My Interest In Multiple Intelligences.

Knowledge Is Not The Same As Morality, But We Need To Understand If We Are To Avoid Past Mistakes And Move In Productive Directions. An Important Part Of That Understanding Is Knowing Who We Are And What We Can Do... Ultimately, We Must Synthesize Our Understandings For Ourselves.

Teaching Which Ignores The Realities Of Children Will Be Rejected As Surely As Any Graft Which Attempts To Ignore The Body's Immune System.

In Every Part Of The World With Which I Am Familiar, Young People Are Completely Immersed In The Digital World - So Much So, That It Is Inconceivable To Them That They Can, For Long, Be Separated From Their Devices. Indeed, Many Of Us Who Are Not Young, Who Are 'digital Immigrants' Rather Than 'digital Natives,' Are Also Wedded To, If Not Dependent On, Our Digital Devices.

As A Planet, We Are At Risk Of Destruction (for Example, Gradually By The Warming Of The Planet; Or Rapidly, By Nuclear War Or A Pathogen That Gets Out Of Control). And These Threats Require Us To Work Together, And Not Just To Announce Our Diversity.

I’d Rather See The United States As A Beacon Of Good Work And Good Citizenship, Rather Than As #1 On Some International Educational Measurement.

Any Good Teacher Should Become Acquainted With Relevant Technologies. But The Technologies Should Not Dictate An Education Goal. Rather, The Teacher (or Parent Or Student Or Policy Maker) Should Ask: Can Technology Help To Achieve This Goal, And Which Technologies Are Most Likely To Be Helpful?

An Individual Understands A Concept, Skill, Theory, Or Domain Of Knowledge To The Extent That He Or She Can Apply It Appropriately In A New Situation.

Young Children Possess The Ability To Cut Across The Customary Categories; To Appreciate Usually Undiscerned Links Among Realms, To Respond Effectively In A Parallel Manner To Events Which Are Usually Categorized Differently, And To Capture These Ori

Being Creative Means First Of All Doing Something Unusual... On The Other Hand, However Unusual It May Be, The Idea Also Has To Be Reasonable For People To Take It Seriously.

A Person Who Is App-dependent Is Always Searching For The Best App; And As Soon As Its Routine Has Been Executed, The Person Searches For The Next App. A Person Who Is App-enabled Also Uses Apps Frequently. But He Or She Is Never Limited By The Current Array Of Apps; Apps Will Free The Person To Do What He Or She Wants To Do, Or Needs To Do, Irrespective Of The Next Application Of The App. An App-enabled Person Can Also Put Devices Away, Without Feeling Bereft.

A Continuing Conversation With Other Persons, With Cultural Products, And With Oneself, Is A Large Part Of What It Means To Be A Human Being, In Our Time And Perhaps In All Time.

While We May Continue To Use The Words Smart And Stupid, And While Iq Tests May Persist For Certain Purposes, The Monopoly Of Those Who Believe In A Single General Intelligence Has Come To An End. Brain Scientists And Geneticists Are Documenting The Incredible Differentiation Of Human Capacities, Computer Programmers Are Creating Systems That Are Intelligent In Different Ways, And Educators Are Freshly Acknowledging That Their Students Have Distinctive Strengths And Weaknesses.

I Don't Think That It Is Necessary To Rethink Curricular Goals. But It Is Certainly Worth Thinking About Whether These Goals Can Be Reached In Multiple Ways.

If You Think Education Is Expensive, Try Estimating The Cost Of Ignorance.

Teachers Must Be Encouraged - I Almost Said 'freed', To Pursue An Education That Strives For Depth Of Understanding.

I Am Relieved That, In My Own Teaching, I Don't Have To Moderate Between High Stake Teaching And Education For The Virtues. If I Did, I Would Give Students The Tools To Take The Tests But Not Spend An Inordinate Amount Of Time On Test Prep Nor On 'teaching To The Test.' If The Students, Or Their Parents, Want Drill In Testing, They'd Have To Go Elsewhere. As A Professional, My Most Important Obligation Is To Teach The Topic, Skills, And Methods In Ways That I Feel Are Intellectually Legitimate.

I Think That Any Important Educational Goal Can Be Realized Via Several Routes.

Now Intelligence Seemed Quantifiable. You Could Measure Someone's Actual Or Potential Height, And Now, It Seemed, You Could Also Measure Someone's Actual Or Potential Intelligence. We Had One Dimension Of Mental Ability Along Which We Could Array Everyone... The Whole Concept Has To Be Challenged; In Fact, It Has To Be Replaced.

Hitler Didn't Travel. Stalin Didn't Travel. Saddam Hussein Never Traveled. They Didn't Want To Have Their Orthodoxy Challenged.

Stories Are The Single Most Powerful Tool In A Leader's Toolkit.

In The United States, If You Ask Teachers, "are There Children Whom We Should Call 'gifted?'", Many If Not Most Will Say 'no.' That's The Politically Correct Answer. But If You Then Ask The Teacher To Rank Order Students In Terms Of How Well They Paint Or Write Or Dance, They'll Have Little Difficulty In Doing So.

While Truth Is Ultimately Convergent, Beauty Is Ultimately Divergent. No One Can And No One Should Tell Anyone Else What That Person Should Consider Beautiful.

The Wonderful Thing About The Theater Is That It Can Emphasize Both Our Diversity And Our Common Humanity. In Many Ways, The World Of Shakespeare (or Aeschylus Or Racine) Is Totally Different From Our World; And Yet Any Human Being Can Look Through The Differences In Dress And Mores And Discover Our Common Problems, Passions, And Potentials.

Common Humanity

I Want My Children To Understand The World, But Not Just Because The World Is Fascinating And The Human Mind Is Curious. I Want Them To Understand It So That They Will Be Positioned To Make It A Better Place

The Biggest Communities In Which Young People Now Reside Are Online Communities.

No Individual Can Be In Full Control Of His Fate-our Strengths Come Significantly From Our History, Our Experiences Largely From The Vagaries Of Chance. But By Seizing The Opportunity To Leverage And Frame These Experiences, We Gain Agency Over Them. And This Heightened Agency, In Turn, Places Us In A Stronger Position To Deal With Future Experiences, Even As It May Alter Our Own Sense Of Strengths And Possibilities.

Kids Make Their Mark In Life By Doing What They Can Do, Not What They Can't... School Is Important, But Life Is More Important. Being Happy Is Using Your Skills Productively, No Matter What They Are.

If You Enjoy Reading, Writing, Learning, And Sharing What You Have Learned, Don't Hesitate To Look For A Life Where You Can Continue To Do Those Things. It Could Be As A Scientist, An Educator, An Editor, A Journalist, The Founder Of An Organization. You Only Live Once, And It Is A Tragedy If You Deny Yourself These Options Without Trying To Pursue Them.

Perhaps, Indeed, There Are No Truly Universal Ethics: Or To Put It More Precisely, The Ways In Which Ethical Principles Are Interpreted Will Inevitably Differ Across Cultures And Eras. Yet, These Differences Arise Chiefly At The Margins. All Known Societies Embrace The Virtues Of Truthfulness, Integrity, Loyalty, Fairness; None Explicitly Endorse Falsehood, Dishonesty, Disloyalty, Gross Inequity. (five Minds For The Future, P136)

Ethical Principles

I Am Knowledgeable Enough About The World Of Prizes To Realize That There Is A Large Degree Of Luck - Both For The Recognitions That You Receive And Those That You Did Not.

What We Want... Is For Students To Get More Interested In Things, More Involved In Them, More Engaged In Wanting To Know; To Have Projects That They Can Get Excited About And Work On Over Long Periods Of Time, To Be Stimulated To Find Things Out On Their Own.

Education Is At A Turning Point

But Once We Realize That People Have Very Different Kinds Of Minds, Different Kinds Of Strengths -- Some People Are Good In Thinking Spatially, Some In Thinking Language, Others Are Very Logical, Other People Need To Be Hands On And Explore Actively And Try Things Out -- Then Education, Which Treats Everybody The Same Way, Is Actually The Most Unfair Education.

I Reject The Notion That Human Beings Have A Single Intelligence, Which Can Be Drawn On For The Full Range Of Problem Solving.

'til 1983, I Wrote Primarily For Other Psychologists And Expected That They Would Be The Principal Audience For My Book.

Beauty Reveals Itself In The Course Of An Experience With An Object.

When A Child Is Thriving, There Is No Reason To Spend Time Assessing Intelligences. But When A Child Is Not Thriving - In School Or At Home - That Is The Time To Apply The Lens Of Multiple Intelligences And See Whether One Can Find Ways To Help The Child Thrive In Different Environments.

You Learn At Your Best When You Have Something You Care About And Can Get Pleasure In Being Engaged In.

Don't Assume That The Way That One Searches And Researches Is The Same From One Era To Another - It Isn't. In The 19th Century, Most Research Was Done By Amateurs: Either Individuals Who Were Rich Or Individuals Who Had A Day Job. In The 20th Century, Most Researchers Worked At Universities Or Think Tanks And Received Money From The Government Or From Foundations To Pursue Their Work. In Our Time, The Sources Of Support And The Locations For Research May Be Quite Different.

We Should Spend Less Time Ranking Children And More Time Helping Them To Identify Their Natural Competencies And Gifts And Cultivate These. There Are Hundreds And Hundreds Of Ways To Succeed And Many, Many Different Abilities That Will Help You Get There.

All Human Beings Have All Of The Intelligences. But We Differ, For Both Genetic And Experiential Reasons, In Our Profile Of Intelligences At Any Moment.

We've Got To Do Fewer Things In School. The Greatest Enemy Of Understanding Is Coverage... You've Got To Take Enough Time To Get Kids Deeply Involved In Something So They Can Think About It In Lots Of Different Ways And Apply It.

It May Well Be Easier To Remember A List If One Sings It (or Dances To It). However, These Uses Of The 'materials' Of An Intelligence Are Essentially Trivial. What Is Not Trivial Is The Capacity To Think Musically.

In Order For Me To 'endorse' An Intelligence, I Need To Carry Out Lots Of Research.

Our Way Of Managing And Leading, Rewarding And Judging People Is Totally Out Of Tune With The Fact That We Are All Individuals.

We Can Enhance Our Intelligences, But I Am Never Going To Become Yo-yo Ma, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Or Pele.

When Speaking To Parents, I Encourage Them To Take Their Child(ren) To A Children's Museum And Watch Carefully What The Child Does, How She/she Does It, What He/she Returns To, Where There Is Definite Growth. Teachers Could Do The Same Or Could Set Up 'play Areas' Which Provide 'nutrition' For Different Intelligences... And Watch Carefully What Happens And What Does Not Happen With Each Child.

The Countries Who Do The Best In International Comparisons, Whether It's Finland Or Japan, Denmark Or Singapore, Do Well Because They Have Professional Teachers Who Are Respected, And They Also Have Family And Community Which Support Learning.

I Think That Every Educator, Indeed Every Human Being, Is Concerned With What Is True And What Is Not; What Experiences To Cherish And Which Ones To Avoid; And How Best To Relate To Other Human Beings. We Differ In How Conscious We Are Of These Questions; How Reflective We Are About Our Own Stances; Whether We Are Aware Of How These Human Virtues Are Threatened By Critiques (philosophical, Cultural) And By Technologies (chiefly The Digital Media). A Good Educator Should Help Us All To Navigate Our Way In This Tangled Web Of Virtues.

Part Of The Maturity Of The Sciences Is An Appreciation Of Which Questions Are Best Left To Other Disciplinary Approaches.

A Good Person Is One Who Follows The Ten Commandments And The Golden Rule. There Is Plenty Of Precedent In History To Guide Us And We Probably Evolved To Be Sensitive To Bible-golden Rule Situations. But The Dilemmas Faced By A Worker - A Journalist, An Architect, An Auditor - Or By A Citizen (what Position To Take On Stem Cell Research, Whether To Run For Office, What Is The Proper Balance Between Taxation And Social Nets) - Are Not Questions That Can Be Answered By Traditional Texts Or Precedents.

I Believe That The Brain Has Evolved Over Millions Of Years To Be Responsive To Different Kinds Of Content In The World. Language Content, Musical Content, Spatial Content, Numerical Content, Etc.

In Roughly The Last Century, Important Experiments Have Been Launched By Such Charismatic Educators As Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, And A. S. Neil. These Approaches Have Enjoyed Considerable Success[...] Yet They Have Had Relatively Little Impact On The Mainstream Of Education Throughout The Contemporary World.

Distinguish Between The Work And The Job Title. When I Was Leaving School In The Early 1970s, Many People Wanted To Be Journalists, Carrying Out Investigative Reporting For Print Newspapers. Print Newspapers May Not Exist In Twenty Years. But Good Thinking And Good Writing About Issues That Need To Be Reported And Investigated Will Always Be Needed; But Where This Happens, What It Is Called, And Who Pays For It May Be Quite Different Than Could Have Been Envisioned By The Great Journalists Of The Past.

Best Of All, Persons Can Sometimes Be App-transcendent: Making Dramatic Progress Or Discoveries, Without Any Dependence On Any App. In This Context, I Like To Mention Steve Jobs. While He Had As Much To Do As Anyone With The Invention And Development Of Apps, He Never Was Limited By The Current Technology - Indeed, He Typically Transcended It And Relied On His Own Considerable Wits.

To Ask "where In Your Brain Is Intelligence?" Is Like Asking "where Is The Voice In The Radio?"

By Nature, I Am Not An Optimist, Though I Try To Act As If I Am.

In The United States These Days, 'diversity' Is A Big Word And A Buzzword.

Much Of The Material Presented In Schools Strikes Students As Alien, If Not Pointless.

Any Profession Should Have Norms Around The Issue You Raise. And, In The Words Of The Great Economic Thinker Albert Hirschman, We All Owe A Measure Of Loyalty To Professional Norms. But When The Norms Seem Unhelpful Or Unproductive, One Needs To Speak Up - To Activate Voice. And In The Extreme, If The Profession And One's Colleagues Seem Estranged From A Thoughtfully Selected Course Of Action, You Need To Consider The Possibility Of Exit. Of Course, If You Knowingly Violate Norms Or Laws, You Need To Be Prepared To Face The Consequences - Or To Lead A Revolution!

The Goal Of Education Is To Help People Use Their Minds Better

I Want To Understand How Best To Create And Preserve A Form Of Higher Education That We Value But That Is In Jeopardy For Many Reasons.

Kids Go To School And College And Get Through, But They Don't Seem To Really Care About Using Their Minds. School Doesn't Have The Kind Of Long Term Positive Impact That It Should.

Twenty-five Years Ago, The Notion Was You Could Create A General Problem-solver Software That Could Solve Problems In Many Different Domains. That Just Turned Out To Be Totally Wrong.

No Academic Ever Expects To Be Taken Seriously By More Than Three Other People, Because Really, We Write For Three People In Our Field.

The Ability To Solve Problems Or To Create Products That Are Valued Within One Or More Cultural Settings.

A Lot Of Knowledge In Any Kind Of An Organization Is What We Call Task Knowledge. These Are Things That People Who Have Been There A Long Time Understand Are Important, But They May Not Know How To Talk About Them. It's Often Called The Culture Of The Organization.

What Is Usually Called 'intelligence' Refers To The Linguistic And Logical Capacities That Are Valued In Certain Kinds Of School And For Certain School-like Tasks. It Leaves Little If Any Room For Spatial Intelligence, Personal Intelligences, Musical Intelligence, Etc.

If You Are Not Prepared To Resign Or Be Fired For What You Believe In, Then You Are Not A Worker, Let Alone A Professional. You Are A Slave.

Emile Zola Was A Poor Student At His School At Aix. We Are All So Different Largely Because We All Have Different Combinations Of Intelligences. If We Recognize This, I Think We Will Have At Least A Better Chance Of Dealing Appropriately With Many Problems That We Face In The World.

Well, If Storytelling Is Important, Then Your Narrative Ability, Or Your Ability To Put Into Words Or Use What Someone Else Has Put Into Words Effectively, Is Important Too.

Anything That Is Worth Teaching Can Be Presented In Many Different Ways. These Multiple Ways Can Make Use Of Our Multiple Intelligences.

The Biggest Mistake Of Past Centuries In Teaching Has Been To Treat All Students As If They Were Variants Of The Same Individual And Thus To Feel Justified In Teaching Them All The Same Subjects The Same Way.

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