The Five Minds by Howard Gardiner
Video Notes:
The Five Minds: disciplined, synthesizing, creating and respectful, and ethical
The first mind is the disciplined mind.
There are several meanngs or definition of the word disciplined.
Discipline: you work steadily on things until you have learned all there is to know. This is obsolete now.
Discipline: becoming an expert in some profession or craft, that is your discipline (the jobs for the drones don’t exist anymore.)
Discipline: the scholarly disciplines: history, science, math and artistic thinking is what we need to inculcate in pre-collegiate thinking.
·
In his book, The Disciplined Mind, Gardiner lays out what he thinks the underlying mental frames are to thinking in general.
· The kind of thinking you need to do as a mathematician is very different from the thinking you need to do as a poet.
· This is a heterodox view that most people don’t share, but he thinks it is right.
· Science education: knowing a lot of facts, about-itis. When you are simply dealing with factoids, you are not dealing with the discipline at all. These factoids are subject matter, not discipline.
· A heterodox statement means there will be a great minority who believe it:
· Meta-scientific knowledge (his term) = knowing what the science is about (like metacognition), like understanding the scientific method.
· The second mind is the synthesizing mind.
· Darwin is a great example of a synthesizing mind.
· We are being inundated, deluged, with facts, data…etc. The synthesizing mind asks what do I pay attention to and why, and what do I ignore?
· If I to pay attention to it, how do I put it together?
· If I can’t put it together in a way that makes sense to me, it’s gone.
· Then, how do I convey it to someone else?
· Character in Moliere, Mssr. Jordin, who discovered that he had been speaking prose without knowing it
· Teachers need to help young children synthesize but we are never taught to do this
· The third mind is the creating mind.
· Comes up with something new: solves problems, creates new art
· Icons of high creativity like Einstein.
· Everyone talks about thinking outside the box, but you can’t unless you’ve got a box. And a discipline would take at least 10 years to master a discipline.
· “Unless you synthesize what is known, there is very little chance you can do anything new. You have to have a box before you can go outside it.”
· What characterizes creative minds more than anything else in terms of intelligence is a certain irreverence, a challenging temperament, and resiliency to keep going after failing.
· Children need to have opportunities to fail and try again.
· The USA inculcates irreverence as part of our culture.
· The fourth mind is the respectful mind
· In school context, science, math, technology, etc. but no national curriculum for education.
· Maybe they wouldn’t need to be if these were taught in the culture at large
· He doesn’t think that religion in our country is tied to respect or ethics.
· The respectful mind: giving others the benefit of the doubt, trying to understand them, trying to work with them, even when they don’t look like you.
· We are racially diverse now and this is new, culturally.
· We are becoming more interconnected.
· Respect begins at birth, the infant bonds with the parent and sees how people treat one another, modeling. He can assess in minutes how respectful a school is. (How is the janitor treated?)
· Kiss up and kick down
· Tolerance is better than intolerance. Respect is a much higher goal than intolerance.
· Hopeful signs, commissions on peace and reconciliation. Yo-yo Ma along the Silk Road. Israel and Palestine.
· Wearing of scarves in France and cartoons in Denmark
· The fifth mind is the ethical mind.
· Infants don’t have the ability to think abstractly. The abstract attitude says I am not just Howard Gardiner, but what is my social responsibility? What do I do with my trash? What car do I drive? What are my obligations as a citizen of this country, this earth?
· As a teacher, what is your role? As a student, what is your role in this room, this school, this country, this world?
· The Good Work Project with Daimond Sahi? Focus on ethics. What does it mean to be an ethical worker today no matter what your profession is.
· A study of good work in young people. Results were alarming. If young kids have an ethical sense, it is very different from the one we grew up with.
· Cheating is wrong vs. why shouldn’t you cheat
· Making good by Gardiner
· Someday I would like to be ethical but not today, apologetically or defiantly. The slippery slope.
· Success means fame, power, and money
Classroom implications: awareness of the five minds.
· Modeling for children
· Calling attention to good examples
· Calling attention to bad examples
· Having consequences for bad behavior
· “Enron, the smartest guys in the room”. Movie shown to kids and they blamed the governor, then the legislature.
· Negative examples might not be transparent to students. We will need to talk about it.
********************************************************************************************************************************************
:
The Five Minds: disciplined, synthesizing, creating and respectful, and ethical
The first mind is the disciplined mind.
There are several meanngs or definition of the word disciplined.
Discipline: you work steadily on things until you have learned all there is to know. This is obsolete now.
Discipline: becoming an expert in some profession or craft, that is your discipline (the jobs for the drones don’t exist anymore.)
Discipline: the scholarly disciplines: history, science, math and artistic thinking is what we need to inculcate in pre-collegiate thinking.
·
In his book, The Disciplined Mind, Gardiner lays out what he thinks the underlying mental frames are to thinking in general.
· The kind of thinking you need to do as a mathematician is very different from the thinking you need to do as a poet.
· This is a heterodox view that most people don’t share, but he thinks it is right.
· Science education: knowing a lot of facts, about-itis. When you are simply dealing with factoids, you are not dealing with the discipline at all. These factoids are subject matter, not discipline.
· A heterodox statement means there will be a great minority who believe it:
· Meta-scientific knowledge (his term) = knowing what the science is about (like metacognition), like understanding the scientific method.
· The second mind is the synthesizing mind.
· Darwin is a great example of a synthesizing mind.
· We are being inundated, deluged, with facts, data…etc. The synthesizing mind asks what do I pay attention to and why, and what do I ignore?
· If I to pay attention to it, how do I put it together?
· If I can’t put it together in a way that makes sense to me, it’s gone.
· Then, how do I convey it to someone else?
· Character in Moliere, Mssr. Jordin, who discovered that he had been speaking prose without knowing it
· Teachers need to help young children synthesize but we are never taught to do this
· The third mind is the creating mind.
· Comes up with something new: solves problems, creates new art
· Icons of high creativity like Einstein.
· Everyone talks about thinking outside the box, but you can’t unless you’ve got a box. And a discipline would take at least 10 years to master a discipline.
· “Unless you synthesize what is known, there is very little chance you can do anything new. You have to have a box before you can go outside it.”
· What characterizes creative minds more than anything else in terms of intelligence is a certain irreverence, a challenging temperament, and resiliency to keep going after failing.
· Children need to have opportunities to fail and try again.
· The USA inculcates irreverence as part of our culture.
· The fourth mind is the respectful mind
· In school context, science, math, technology, etc. but no national curriculum for education.
· Maybe they wouldn’t need to be if these were taught in the culture at large
· He doesn’t think that religion in our country is tied to respect or ethics.
· The respectful mind: giving others the benefit of the doubt, trying to understand them, trying to work with them, even when they don’t look like you.
· We are racially diverse now and this is new, culturally.
· We are becoming more interconnected.
· Respect begins at birth, the infant bonds with the parent and sees how people treat one another, modeling. He can assess in minutes how respectful a school is. (How is the janitor treated?)
· Kiss up and kick down
· Tolerance is better than intolerance. Respect is a much higher goal than intolerance.
· Hopeful signs, commissions on peace and reconciliation. Yo-yo Ma along the Silk Road. Israel and Palestine.
· Wearing of scarves in France and cartoons in Denmark
· The fifth mind is the ethical mind.
· Infants don’t have the ability to think abstractly. The abstract attitude says I am not just Howard Gardiner, but what is my social responsibility? What do I do with my trash? What car do I drive? What are my obligations as a citizen of this country, this earth?
· As a teacher, what is your role? As a student, what is your role in this room, this school, this country, this world?
· The Good Work Project with Daimond Sahi? Focus on ethics. What does it mean to be an ethical worker today no matter what your profession is.
· A study of good work in young people. Results were alarming. If young kids have an ethical sense, it is very different from the one we grew up with.
· Cheating is wrong vs. why shouldn’t you cheat
· Making good by Gardiner
· Someday I would like to be ethical but not today, apologetically or defiantly. The slippery slope.
· Success means fame, power, and money
Classroom implications: awareness of the five minds.
· Modeling for children
· Calling attention to good examples
· Calling attention to bad examples
· Having consequences for bad behavior
· “Enron, the smartest guys in the room”. Movie shown to kids and they blamed the governor, then the legislature.
· Negative examples might not be transparent to students. We will need to talk about it.
********************************************************************************************************************************************
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