5 Minds for the Future - Howard Gardner

Catching the essence of 5 Minds for the Future - it is a scientific and learned book by a Harvard academic (Graduate School of Education) about the different kinds - or I'd say "different depth of consciousness and connection" - of the mind.

The first is the Disciplined mind, one that masters a certain knowledge. Here, mind you, the key words are "mastery" and "discipline". A lot of leaning is actually about unthinking practice and repetition. That is about knowledge and not mastering a discipline. Mastering means being able to discern the principles from the orthodoxy during application and not to confuse between the two. One is knowing the essence while the other is simply repeating the common ways of application or more usually - just pretending to know.

The second mind actually goes even deeper than that - its the Synthesizing mind. Again, this caught me off-guard. Initially I thought its an ability to bring together different strands of knowledge and information and put them together and creating a new amalgam or context. Apparently it is more than that, because it pre-supposes that one first has to have mastery of different areas of knowledge. That makes sense, if one does not know the essence of different areas of knowledge, it would only be a surface, glib and ultimately flawed synthesis. The book went on to say that in the past, knowledge grew slowly enough for some smart people to know many if not all disciplines well. But in the current era, experts in certain areas tend to have narrower and narrower focus, that it is hard to someone to have a truly synthesizing mind. Nonetheless, it is important as genuinely new sources of ideas.

The third is the creative mind. This differs from the synthesizing mind in that it makes the leap away from making existing knowledge useful in a new form or combination and into a new direction. Gardner argues that in many societies many people claim to be creative but to be truly creative requires expertise in existing discipline and not an undisciplined and ignorant stab in a new direction. Such changes are either superficial, or spectacular departures that are speculative and fail on scrutiny.

The forth mind is the respectful mind. By this the author meant the ability to maintain healthy and genuine* respect for differences and diversity in opinion. A respectful mind does not include political correctness (derived from fear of being criticized) or tolerance for the sake of seeking advantage without efforts to understand. The person is able to discern ideas that he agrees or disagrees with - and some which he accepts and others which he does not accept but at the same time does not allow such differences to become a source of animosity or hatred. I find that the author sees this primarily as a necessary ingredient for peace in a globalized and inter-connected world - where both the scope for differences between people and the destructive powers of hatred are acute and magnified. There was a good example of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa where the purpose was not judicial or retribution, but as a mechanism for both victims and perpetrators of Apartheid to have a genuine and respectful dialogue - to get injustices out into the open, to document the facts, to allow both sides to offer/seek forgiveness and make peace with the past, to clear the air - which helped to heal the society. Of course it required personal leadership from the likes of Mandela but this was the institutional mechanism.

Gardner also gave an interesting anecdote of a study of people who rescued their fellow citizens from genocide during WW2, and found what they had in common were childhood environment/upbringing where their parents explain the rules and the rights and wrongs instead of relying on threats or physical punishment. I see that as a difference between getting a desired behavior in children through respect and unconditional love (where the child internalizes the impact of their choices) versus using fear or threat (where "compliance" is due to succumbing to power or fear). A good lesson.

The fifth mind is that of an ethical mind; and this one is about "doing good" and having meaning in life. I find it interesting that here "goodness" was defined to have 3 qualities: excellent in quality, responsible in its implications and engaging/meaningful for the person doing it, a source of joy. In particular, Gardner had in mind goodness in the context of a virtuous community or a civil society - and the role of early exposure to ethical examples at home, by way of how their parents "show up" in the decisions they make and the values they live by.

Here I noted the importance the author gave to the roles of parents, educators and peer groups in the cultivation of the respectful and ethical minds. In fact, the further one gets from the disciplined mind the less the role for formal education. The synthesizing mind is essentially one for the expert level - the highly learned - and is essentially life-long learning. The creative mind even more so.

Interestingly, Gardner attempted to suggest an order for acquiring the 5 minds; the respectful mind right from the beginning otherwise no other learning would be easy, followed by the Disciplined Mind, Synthesizing Mind + Creative Mind and the Ethical Mind (which he believes requires more matured abstract thinking). On the other hand, I feel that the Ethical Mind should be nurtured right from the beginning mainly through positive example and thoughtful observation of society.

In this respect, I feel grateful that among the features I most appreciate of UNIS (where my daughters go to school), it definitely exhibited a strong culture of celebrating the respectful mind and ethical mind. From a young age, the environment is loving, nurturing and supportive of cultural diversity, while being conscious of ethical actions, community and how to make a personal difference.