Friday, August 31, 2007

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Mental building blocks for the next century

We will be discussing this in class briefly. Outside my office door are 5 -6 pages from the book that you can borrow and read.

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Mental building blocks for the next century

"Gardner identifies these five different minds as: disciplined, synthesising, creating, respectful and ethical. The disciplined mind "has mastered at least one way of thinking", Gardner says. "Without at least one discipline . . . the individual is destined to march to someone else's tune."

The synthesising mind "takes information from disparate sources . . . and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesiser and also other persons . . . the capacity to synthesise becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates".

The creating mind "breaks new ground", the author says. "It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers." In so doing, the creating mind "seeks to remain at least one step ahead" of computers.

The respectful mind "notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups . . . In a world where we are all interlinked, in-tolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option."

Last, the ethical mind "conceptualises how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest". The ethical mind then "acts on the basis of these analyses"."


Gardner has an interesting page
with some video and audio of his talks as well as NPR audio.