Frustrated and disappointed by constraining lists of "core knowledge" and elitist notions of "cultural literacy," renowned Harvard educator and psychologist Howard Gardner demonstrates his own synthesis of what makes the best learning in The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand. Gardner's profound invention, the concept of multiple intelligences, has shown how each of us has his or her own pattern of intelligence, or modes of learning and talent (for example, one person may do best at logical and musical activities, while another is more socially and linguistically attuned). Armed with an understanding of these intelligences, teachers have been provided a marvelous tool to access and develop the minds of all students better. In this heartening book, Gardner both furthers his vision and reveals his formulation of the "ideal education." "Deep understanding should be our central goal; we should strive to inculcate understanding of what, within a cultural context, is considered true or false, beautiful or unpalatable, good or evil," he writes. To illustrate learning opportunities in these three realms, Gardner selects some heavyweight topics: Darwin's theory of evolution, Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, and the Holocaust. After a brief tour of the world's best schools (including Italy's remarkable student-driven Reggio Emilia), Gardner shows how these themes might be taught with a "multiple intelligences" approach to create as many ways as possible to begin study.
At times, Gardner's laments about education sound remarkably like those of fellow progressive Herbert Kohl (especially in 1998's Discipline of Hope: Learning from a Lifetime of Teaching). Each has a bitter pill for us to swallow about the status quo in education, but remains hopeful in his outlook for the future--if we can make some radical revisions to the methods and goals of our system, both men contend, all children can be graciously served by our teachers and schools. --Brian Williamson
From Kirkus Reviews
An exhaustiveand sometimes exhaustinganalysis of education's purpose across time, distance, and discipline, by an author who insists, paradoxically, that when it comes to learning, less is more. Gardner, the Harvard psychologist who pioneered the theory of multiple intelligences, gathers evidence from a wide range of fields, including anthropology, psychology, history, and economics, to argue that education's ultimate goal should be to pass on a culture's beliefs about three essential subjects, truth, beauty, and morality, to its children. Challenging E.D. Hirsch's notion of cultural literacy, Gardner claims convincingly that any curriculum that races from ``Plato to NATO'' merely stuffs students with facts they will rapidly forget. What is needed in the age of the Internet, he says, is an ``education of understanding,'' one that not only encourages students to ``determine what is worth knowing'' amidst the blizzard of information now available at the click of a mouse, but also enables them to apply their understanding to new situations. Toward that end, Gardner proposes a K12 curriculum, grounded in the traditional disciplines and based on just three areas of study: evolution, to illustrate the concept of truth; the works of Mozart, to illustrate beauty; and the Holocaust, to illustrate morality and the depths of evil. Those discussions are edifying in their own right, but Gardner's dazzling erudition nearly overwhelms his argument. Each of his ideas comes equipped with a host of ways to implement it; virtually every future challenge, right up to the education of human clones, is considered, and all potential criticisms, including the most obvious ones that his plan is idiosyncratic and Eurocentric, are strenuously refuted. Then, almost as an afterthought, Gardner proposes five other educational paths, guaranteed to please everyone from Bill Bennett to Bill Gates. Despite the author's failure to heed his own minimalist advice, Gardner's thought-provoking vision of what schools ought to be should interest anyone who is concerned about the way they are now. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
The Disciplined Mind represents among other things Gardner's effort to deal with some of the unfortunate consequences of his gurudom. -- The New York Times Book Review, James Traub
