Five Minds for the Future
By:
Howard Gardner
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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5
Description:
We live in a time of relentless change. The only thing that?s certain is that new challenges and opportunities will emerge that are virtually unimaginable today. How can we know which skills will be required to succeed?
In Five Minds for the Future, bestselling author Howard Gardner shows how we will each need to master "five minds" that the fast-paced future will demand:
-The disciplined mind, to learn at least one profession, as well as the major thinking (science, math, history, etc.) behind it
-The synthesizing mind, to organize the massive amounts of information and communicate effectively to others
-The creating mind, to revel in unasked questions - and uncover new phenomena and insightful apt answers
-The respectful mind, to appreciate the differences between human beings - and understand and work with all persons
-The ethical mind, to fulfill one's responsibilities as both a worker and a citizen
Without these "minds," we risk being overwhelmed by information, unable to succeed in the workplace, and incapable of the judgment needed to thrive both personally and professionally.
Complete with a substantial new introduction, Five Minds for the Future provides valuable tools for those looking ahead to the next generation of leaders - and for all of us striving to excel in a complex world.
Howard Gardner - cited by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the one hundred most influential public intellectuals in the world, and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient - is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Must Read - This is an excellent summary of Gardners life as a thinker and educator. While his prose is always graduate level reading, the
timeless reference to focusing and staying focused is a needed skill, not only for current educators, teachers, instructors, but for everyone wanting to reach a goal. As always, Garners works stays on the shelf as reference and is referenced frequently.
Customer Review: 1 out of 5
The rectangle does not fit the round hole - This modularization of what man needs too succeed in the future just does not make sense to me. It feels more like a corporate agenda. Probably meant to touch a chord for CEO's and like types so that the author can be hired to lecture to their minions on how they should think.
I've read something like 150 pages of the book and I feel that I'm wasting my time.
One flaw is that the five mind concepts are quite interdependant and overlapping. That just tells me that is most probably not the right approach. Try to make sense of it and it will only pose more questions exponentially.
Proposals for guidelines I would make would be for example; there is not a formula for everything, uncertainty is what makes life fun, both people and disciplines should approach each other more "socially" for the bigger picture orchestration of human reality. Just as our concious mind comes about because of a wholistic effect of our cells that we'll never understand, the earth and our descendants need us to work for a better world. Seeing the state of the world today I would not trust a CEO to get the job done.
Customer Review: 2 out of 5
Great content, tiny fonts - My only problem with the paperback edition of this book is the tiny font size. It appears that the hard cover text files were just shrunken down to fit the smaller paperback size. Thus, while the hardcover edition may have had normal-size text, in the paperback edition the text has shrunken to a 9 point font or even an 8 point font. Talk about eye strain.
I've seen this before with UK editions of US books, but this is the worst example I've seen of a hardcover-to-paperback transfer in a US edition.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Great insights! - I knew Howard Gardner from his research on multiple intelligences. A friend gave me his book Five minds for the future. I was absolutely delighted by the view he takes. We must help our children to meet with these 'minds'. This is possible only if education itself reconsiders its goals and approach.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
An Outstanding and Highly Important Book - Howard Gardner is well known for his development of a theory of multiple intelligences (in contrast to the simplistic notion of a single intelligence measurable by something like IQ). In this book, he goes a step further by describing five "minds" which he believes will need to be cultivated in order for individuals and groups to flourish in the future. This cultivation will require substantial reform of our educational systems, will need to continue for each individual as a lifelong pursuit, and will need to be balanced (in the best liberal arts tradition) in a way that encompasses the arts and humanities along with the usual mathematics, science, and technology.
In my opinion, Gardner's proposed five minds pass the basic test of being reasonably distinct from each other. It could be debated whether additional minds need to be added, but I think that they cover plenty of ground, and are at least an excellent starting point. The five minds can be summarized as follows:
1. The Disciplined Mind has mastered the distinctive ways of thinking associated with a scholarly discipline, craft, profession, or other practice. The resulting expertise goes well beyond the erroneous or inadequate approaches laypeople would employ, and often involves the ability to conceptualize problems in multiple ways. Such mastery doesn't generally come naturally and therefore typically takes about a decade of steady effort to develop, followed by continued education and practice to maintain it; coaching and mentoring can be a big help in this regard.
2. The Synthesizing Mind is skilled in drawing information from various sources and organizing it in sensible ways, making useful connections while avoiding false or unproductive ones. Since we tend to operate in domain-specific ways and are driven toward specialization, synthesis doesn't come naturally, but we yearn for it. We often achieve it in the form of narratives, taxonomies, complex concepts, rules, aphorisms, metaphors, themes, theories, metatheories, works of art, etc. Interdisciplinary work explicitly aims for synthesis.
3. The Creating Mind breaks new ground by putting forth new ideas, new ways of thinking, unfamiliar questions, and unexpected answers, and then ideally also gaining their acceptance by others. Not surprisingly, creators are much rarer than "mere" experts and have traits like willingness to deviate from the crowd, perseverance in the face of difficulties and failures, comfort with turbulence, and eagerness to continue pushing boundaries (even after achieving success). But creativity isn't simply a result of individual "genius," since sociocultural context can also play a large role.
4. The Respectful Mind recognizes and accepts the diversity among individuals and groups and thereby shows tolerance and the ability to collaborate effectively with others. Ever-intensifying globalization makes development of the respectful mind an imperative.
5. The Ethical Mind ponders one's work and society's needs at a more abstract level than the respectful mind, and then finds ways to go beyond self-interest and instead also serve others. Ethical work is "good work" in the senses of being of excellent quality, responsible to the community, and engaging in a way that provides meaning.
Gardner does an excellent job in this book of fleshing out the five minds and illustrating their importance. He does this by drawing on his formidable erudition and giving a wonderfully diverse range of great examples. His writing is also exceptionally clear and the book is very well organized. As a result, I found it very easy and enjoyable to read.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in their own personal development and continuing education, the education and development of their children, service to society, and the welfare of the world. This book has made me an appreciative fan of Gardner and I look forward to reading his other books. Also, readers who like this book may also want to check out Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success by James Marcus Bach.
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