5 Minds for the Future – A Summary

by admin-kablooey | Feb 26, 2011 | Connection Economy, Future Trends, Leadership, Reviews

(books, websites, resources), Strategy | 2 comments
This post was first published on Pete Laburn’s blog in Feb 2011
In his book, ‘5 Minds for the Future’ (buy it now at Amazon.co.uk and Kalahari.net) Howard Gardner
concerns himself with the kinds of minds that people will need if we are to thrive in the world during
the eras to come. Also, in the inter-connected world in which the majority of human beings now live
we need to identify the kinds of minds that should be developed in the future for the greater good of
our society as a whole.
The 5 Minds for the Future identified by Gardner refer to 5 characteristics of the mind that Gardner
suggests each person should aim to develop. While each person will not be able to develop them all
in equal measure, we should aim to develop aspects of them all for the balance of mind needed for
the future…
Each mind has been important historically, but will become even more crucial in the future. With
these minds, a person will be well equipped to deal with what is expected, as well as what cannot be
anticipated, in the future. While without these minds, a person will be at the mercy of forces that he
or she can’t understand, let alone control.
The 5 minds for the future as set out by Gardner are:
1. The Disciplined Mind;
2. The Synthesising Mind;
3. The Creating Mind;
4. The Respectful Mind; and
5. The Ethical Mind.
Gardner feels that these 5 minds are particularly at a premium in the world of today and will be even
more so in the future. They span both the cognitive spectrum and human enterprise and are
therefore comprehensive, global and can be cultivated. Education is the key to developing these 5
minds for the future, and while traditional forms of education will bear the burden of training young
minds, parents, peers and the media also play an as important role in influencing and developing
minds of tomorrow. Moreover, it is important to note that in a world that shows no signs of slowing
down, no individual or organisation can afford to rest on his or her intellectual laurels. The future
belongs to those that have made an active lifelong commitment to continue to learn. Gardner
believes that in the workplace we should be seeking people who possess disciplined, synthesising,
creating, respectful and ethical minds, but should all continue to perennially develop all five minds
ourselves.
For the most part, traditional forms of education have remained quite conservative. While this is not
necessarily a bad thing, Gardner believes that it is time for undertaking new educational practices.
He believes that the current practices are not working and that we are not educating young people
who are literate, immersed in the arts, capable of scientific theorising, tolerant of immigrants or
skilled in conflict resolution. Secondly, he feels that conditions in the world have changed and are
continuing to change so significantly that certain goals, capacities and practises might no longer be
beneficial, but in fact counterproductive. We live at a time of vast changes. Most of these changes
entail the power of science and technology and globalization. These changes call for new
educational forms and processes.
Education is inherently and inevitably an issue of human goals and human values. One cannot begin
to develop an educational system unless one has in mind the knowledge and skills that one values
and a vision of the kind of individuals one hopes will emerge at the end of the day. Educators need
to decide what traits they want to develop in youngsters before developing an education system.
Recent years have seen the dominance of science and technology in importance in education to the
detriment of the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, civics, civility, ethics, health, safety and
 fitness. Science on its own can never constitute a sufficient education, no matter how valuable the
skills are to industry, and science is not the only important area of knowledge that young people
should be taught.
Globalization features four unprecedented trends:
1. The movement of capital and other market instruments around the globe, with huge amounts
circulating virtually instantaneously each day;
2. The movement of human beings across borders, with well more than 100-million immigrants
scattered around the world at any time;
3. The movement of all matter of information through cyberspace, with megabytes of
information of various degrees of reliability available to anyone with access to a computer;
4. The movement of popular culture – such as stylish clothing, foods and melodies – readily
across borders so that teenagers the world over look increasingly similar, even as the tastes, beliefs
and values of their elders may also converge.
Gardner believes that current formal education still prepares students primarily for the world of the
past, rather than for possible worlds of the future. To be specific, educators assume that educational
goals and values are self-evident without stating their precepts explicitly. We acknowledge the
importance of science and technology, but do not teach scientific ways of thinking, let alone how to
develop individuals with synthesising and creative capacities essential for continual scientific and
technological progress. In addition, we think of science as the prototype for all knowledge, rather
than one powerful way of knowing that needs to be complemented by artistic and humanistic and
spiritual stances. We acknowledge the factors of globalisation but have not figured out how to
prepare youngsters so that they can survive and thrive in a world different from anything we could
imagine.
Turning to the workplace, we have become far more aware of the necessity of continuing education.
Nonetheless, much of corporate education is narrowly focused on skills with innovation outsourced
and ethics discussed in occasional workshops. Few corporate settings embrace a liberal arts
perspective. We do not think deeply about the human qualities that we want to cultivate at the
workplace.
The 5 minds for the future are the main characteristics that we will need to cultivate if we are to have
the kinds of managers, leaders and citizens needed to populate our planet.
 Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding
workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks.
 Individuals without synthesising capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable
to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters.
 Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away
those who do have the creative spark.
 Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the
workplace and the commons.
 Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible
citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet.
The Disciplined Mind
 The Disciplined mind refers to the ability to think in ways associated with major scholarly disciplines
such as history, math and science, and major professions like law, medicine, management, finance
as well as the ability to apply oneself diligently, improving steadily and continuing beyond formal
education.
Recent scientific research into student’s intellectual understanding, including those who attend the
best schools, has revealed that despite accumulating plenty of factual or subject matter knowledge,
most students have not learned to think in a disciplined manner. If most of the worlds education
system is concerned with the acquisition of the appropriate disciplinary knowledge, habits of mind
and patterns of behaviour and the eradication of erroneous unproductive ways of thinking, why then
do many students continue to adhere to inadequate ways of thinking. Gardner believes that it is
because teachers and students do not appreciate the differences between subject matter and
discipline. Most students are studying subject matter, trying to commit to memory a large number of
facts, formulas and figures. They are then tested on this information, and are thought to be good
students and will succeed in their course if they are able to contain all this information.
Disciplines represent a radically different phenomenon. A discipline constitutes a distinctive way of
thinking about the world. Distinctive ways of thinking characterise the professions and are modelled
by skilled practitioners. Study should help students to acquire the habit of these discipline specific
ways of thinking. Students need to understand information not as an end in itself or a stepping stone
to more advanced information, but rather as a means to better-informed practice.
The absence of disciplinary thinking matters. Without these sophisticated ways of thinking,
individuals remain unschooled, no different from uneducated individuals in how they think of the
physical world, the biological world, the human world, the imaginative world and the commercial
world. They have not benefited from the genuine progress achieved by learned individuals in the
past few thousand years. There are fewer and fewer occupations in which one can progress without
at least some sophistication in scientific, mathematical, professional, commercial and humanistic
thinking. While scholarly disciplines allow you to participate knowledgeably in the world, professional
disciplines allow you to thrive at the workplace.
While facts and figures and other information are important, in today’s world of search engines and
virtual encyclopaedias, nearly all desired information can be retrieved almost instantaneously, but it
is the mastering of the disciplined mind that sets someone apart from others.
Gardner believes that it is essential for individuals in the future to be able to think in ways that
characterise the major disciplines. At high school level all students should be introduced and master
the ways of thinking in science, mathematics, history and at least one art form. These few main
disciplines are gateways to other sciences, the social sciences and other forms of art. Without
acquiring these thinking patterns students will be completely dependent on others to formulate views
about the world. These forms of thinking will serve students well no matter what profession they
eventually enter. Knowledge of facts is a useful ornament but a fundamentally different undertaking
than thinking in a discipline.
At university and graduate level or in the workplace, the target profession will determine the relevant
discipline that should be pursued and the structure and processes of these disciplines should be
mastered ahead of facts and figures.
Here are 4 steps essential to developing a disciplined mind:
1. Identify the important topics or concepts within the discipline. Some of these will be content
and others will be methodological.
2. Spend a significant amount of time on each topic. If it is worth studying, it is worth studying
deeply over a long period of time, using a variety of examples and modes of analysis.
3. Approach the topic in a number of ways taking advantage of the variety of ways that people
can learn. Any lesson is more likely to be understood if it has been approached through diverse
entry points, these can include stories, logical expositions, debate, dialogue, humour, role play,
 graphic depictions, video or cinematic presentations. A good student should draw on several
intelligences in inculcating key concepts or processes.
4. Set up performances of understanding and give students ample opportunities to perform
their understandings under a variety of conditions.  While understanding is something that occurs in
the mind or brain, you cannot ascertain whether the understanding is robust or genuine unless the
student is able to mobilize their understanding publically by answering a new question or problem
that they have not been exposed to before.
In the end, the achievement of a disciplined mind breeds a desire for more, thereby fuelling the
desire for ongoing, life-long learning. Perhaps at one time in the past an individual could acquire his
professional license and then coast on his laurels for the next 30-50 years. But today there is no
career to which this characterisation still applies. Indeed, the more important the profession is
considered to be, the more essential to continue ones education.
Equally important in the development of the disciplined mind is the other kind of discipline – referring
to the extent to which the individual has acquired the habits that allow them to make steady and
unending progress in the mastery of a skill, craft or body of knowledge. The earliest writers about
education stressed the importance of daily drill, study, practice and mastery. In the future a
disciplined individual needs to continue to learn, not because she has been programmed to do so,
but rather because she realises that given the accumulation of new data, knowledge and methods,
she must become a lifelong student, and because she has become passionate about and to enjoy
the process of learning about the world. While the process of developing a disciplined mind is
arduous, it can be fashioned and its achievement represents an indispensable milestone for the
future.
The synthesising mind
The synthesising mind is able to select crucial information from the copious amounts available,
arraying that information in ways that make sense to self and others.
The ability to knit together information from different sources into a coherent whole is vital today. The
amount of accumulated knowledge is reportedly doubling every 2-3 years. Sources of information
are vast and disparate and individuals crave coherence and integration. Nobel Prize-winning
physicist Murray Gell-Mann has asserted that the mind most at a premium in the twenty-first century
will be the mind that can synthesise well.
Yet the forces that stand in the way of synthesis are formidable. Developing a disciplined mind that
can think systematically within one scholarly discipline or profession is difficult, never mind trying to
master a number of perspectives and then piece them together in a useful way. In addition,
individual cognition is remarkably domain-specific and is predisposed to learn skills in certain
contexts. Few individuals have expertise in inculcating the skill of synthesis.
Some common examples of synthesis could take the form of narratives, taxonomies, complex
concepts, rules and aphorisms, powerful metaphors, embodiments without words, theories and
metatheory. In general, any synthesis entails four loosely ordered components:
1. A goal – a statement or conception of what the synthesiser is trying to achieve.
2. A starting point – an idea, image or any previous work on which to build.
3. Selection of strategy, method and approach – here the synthesiser’s disciplinary training
comes into play. The Synthesiser must choose the format of his ultimate synthesis, and drawing on
his discipline, must proceed toward the goal.
4. Drafts and feedback – eventually the synthesiser must develop an initial synthesis and
receive feedback on it.
The mind of the young person is characterised by two powerful but contradictory features. On the
one hand, preschool children readily discern connections between many things, using their
imaginations to use every day objects as imaginary props in their adventures. Preschool children
love using metaphors to describe things. While they are excellent connectors, their connections are
superficial and cannot be continued when trying to synthesise things in adulthood. The natural
human connecting ability is charming but hardly sufficient for adult life.
On the other hand, by middle childhood, the human connecting impulse, while still there, has been
chastened or corralled to where we shy away from proposing fresh comparisons for fear of them
being inexact or illegitimate. In this way human beings turn out to be creatures that are quite context
or site-specific and do not apply skills or concepts widely. Professional training only reinforces these
tendencies, making people more set in their ways of doing things and making it more difficult to
transfer lessons from one area or discipline to another. Aristotle deemed the capacity to create apt
metaphors as a sign of genius as it is such a difficult task for the average person to make
comparisons between two differing fields.
So how do you develop a synthesising mind, and is it possible to develop a disciplined mind while
still keeping alive the potential for synthetic thinking? We have already noted the strong tendency of
young children to see and make connections easily. This cognitive skill constitutes an invaluable
deposit in ones intellectual bank that can be drawn upon at a later stage of life. Therefore we should
be careful to celebrate and not censor or curtail the connections that are effortlessly made by young
minds.
For the most part, the synthesising mind achieves little formal attention during the school years.
Exposure to the occasional adult synthesiser, mass media presentation and the reading of a wide
range of books might prove productive in the development of connections in the long run. School
projects and theme-related curricula can also help to aid the formation of connections, but it is
important to provide explicit standards in judging these projects, taking care to explain that good
connection need to come from the appropriate domain or discipline. Educators must keep open the
possibilities of connection making and honour the plurality of appropriate connections while
identifying those syntheses that are lacking or flawed.
Explicit instruction about forms of synthesis and hints about how to create them will be beneficial for
young synthesisers to learn. Also, the more ways that an individual can represent the same idea or
concept, the more likely they are to come up with a potent synthesis of those ideas, so children
should be encouraged to find as many ways as possible to represent an idea from different angles.
In addition it is important for young people to be exposed to multi-perspectivalism. This involves
students acquiring a better understanding of a specific subject or concept if they can appreciate the
various perspectives from different areas of study that explain it. While a secondary-school student
is not able to contribute original knowledge, they are able to appreciate the respective strengths of
two or more perspectives and are therefore in a much stronger position to integrate or synthesise
these strands of knowledge.
The stance of multi-perspectivalism is very useful in the workplace. If different professionals from
different fields working together can learn to anticipate the concerns of their colleagues then the
prospect of productive, goal-directed teamwork is enhanced. In addition, many projects are
enhanced when individuals of different economic, social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds work
together to find solutions.
In the distant past, a comprehensive synthesising mind seemed within reach. Knowledge
accumulated far more gradually and wise persons had at least a rough grasp of the full body of
knowledge. But we live in a time where our most talented minds know more and more about
increasingly narrow spheres. The division of labour has swept the marketplace of ideas as well and
there is no reason to expect the drive toward specialisation will be stemmed. Therefore, we need to
make a concerted effort to develop this important mental capacity in society.
The Creating Mind
 The creating mind is able to go beyond existing knowledge and synthesis to pose new questions,
offer new solutions, fashion works that stretch existing genres or configure new ones.
In our globally wired society, creativity is sought after, cultivated and praised. But it was not always
so. In most human societies, throughout most of human history, creativity was neither sought after
nor rewarded. In the past, creative individuals in society were at best a mixed blessing, often
disdained, discouraged and even destroyed at the time of their breakthroughs. Our time is different.
Almost every task that can be routinely carried out will be sooner or later taken over by computers.
Virtually all innovation can be communicated almost instantly the world over, available to be built on
by another with the requisite disciplinary skills, understanding and motivation. Until recently,
creativity was seen as the trait of certain individuals who could use this talent across various
performance domains. However, in recent years this viewpoint has changed as we recognise a
variety of relatively independent creative endeavours that do not stretch over to other areas.
Most creativity is the result of the interaction of three elements:
1. The individual who has mastered some discipline or domain of practice and is steadily
issuing variation in that domain.
2. The cultural domain in which an individual is working, with its models, prescriptions and
proscriptions.
3. The social field – those individuals and institutions that provide access to relevant
educational experiences as well as opportunities to perform.
Creativity occurs when an individual or group product, generated in a particular domain, is
recognised by the relevant field as innovative and exerts a genuine, detectable influence on
subsequent work in that domain. Quite simply, has the domain in which you operate been
significantly altered by your contribution?
There is a difference between creators and experts. An expert is an individual who, after a decade or
more of training, has reached the pinnacle of current practice in their chosen domain. The world
depends on experts, but they are not creators. A creator stands out in terms of temperament,
personality and stance. They are perennially dissatisfied with current work, standards, questions and
answers. They strike out in unfamiliar directions and enjoy being different from the pack. They do not
shrink away from the unexpected, but seek to understand it and determine whether it constitutes a
trivial error or an important unknown truth. They are tough skinned and robust. Creators fail
frequently and often dramatically, but it is those who are willing to pick themselves up and try again
that are likely to forge creative achievements.
In education, an individual on a strict disciplinary track masters the key literacies and then begins a
study of disciplines like mathematics, science and history on the way to becoming an expert. But too
strict an adherence to a disciplinary track operates against the more open stances of the synthesiser
or creator, and therefore options need to be kept open in order to not stifle the development of these
freer minds.
Young children, before the age of formal schooling, express the height of creative powers; therefore,
the challenge of the educator is to keep alive the mind and the sensibility of the young child.
Accordingly, a generic formula can be put forth for the nurturing of creative minds in the first decade
of life. Following a period of open exploration in early childhood, it is appropriate to master literacy
and the disciplines. However, it is vital to keep open alternative possibilities and exploration,
exposing youngsters to creative persons and introducing new pursuits. In the middle childhood
years, parents should make sure that their children pursue hobbies or activities that do not feature a
single right answer, but where they can create and invent new things.
Creating minds also need to develop multiple, diverse representations of the same entity. Such
multiple representations are ideal for new ways of thinking about an entity, problem or question.
As students enter adolescence, they become capable of envisioning possibilities that are quite
different from their current realities. Here elders have a responsibility to introduce instances and
systems that operate according to different rules, allowing the adolescent mind to create from there.
There are many parallels between the synthesising and the creating minds. Both require a baseline
of literacy and discipline. Both benefit from the provision of multiple examples, exposure to multiple
role models and the construction of multiple representations of the same general topic. Indeed, no
sharp line separates synthesis from creation and some of the best creations emerge from attempts
at synthesis. Yet the impulses behind the two mental stances are distinctive. The synthesisers’ goal
is to place what has already been established in as useful and illuminating a form as possible, while
the creators’ goal is to extend knowledge and to guide a set of practices along new directions. The
synthesiser seeks order, equilibrium and closure, with the creator is motivated by uncertainty,
surprise, and continual challenge. No society can be composed only of creators for they are by
nature destabilising.
The Respectful Mind
The respectful mind responds sympathetically and constructively to differences among individuals
and among groups, seeking to understand and work with those who are different, extending beyond
mere tolerance and political correctness.
Humans exhibit a deep-seated tendency to create groups, to provide distinctive marks for these
collectives and to adopt clearly positive or negative attitudes towards neighbouring groups. We are
inclined to delineate groups, to identify with and value members of our own group and to adopt
caution when dealing with other groups. However, even if biological bases can be found for division
between groups, every generation must attempt to deal with these stereotypes and prejudices and to
overcome them for peace and unity.
While outlawing war and weapons in an attempt at bringing peach is a noble idea, it is a very unlikely
solution. However, a more reasonable goal is the cultivation of respect for others. With more than 6-
billion people inhabiting the planet, we need to learn how to inhabit the planet without hating one
another, wanting to kill one another or acting on xenophobic inclinations. The concept of respect for
one another expresses an acknowledgement of the differences between people without seeking to
annihilate them, but to learn to live with them and value those who belong to other groups.
Detection of differences is part of human cognition and is impossible to stem, but how those
differences are labelled and interpreted is a cultural phenomenon. By the age of five, the lines of
friendship or hostility, group inclusion or exclusion, love or hatred are already drawn. Based on what
young children observe from others, they have already begun to adopt stances towards the groups
to with they belong and those they don’t. What is important is whether young people attach moral
significance to group membership. Is group A simply different from group B – which is ok, or is group
A better or worse than group B?
The task of educators is to fashion persons who respect differences. In order to do this we need to
provide models and offer lessons that encourage a sympathetic stance. Messages of respect or
disrespect or intolerance are signalled throughout society. Genuine measures of respect are
detectable every day when no one is actively looking. If one wishes to raise individuals who are
respectful of differences across groups, a special burden is placed on education in the social
sciences, the human sciences, the arts and literature. These subjects cannot bypass issues of
respect as they are not pure disciplinary studies, but need to confront directly the value of respect,
the cost of respect and the greater costs of disrespect in the long run. Terrorism has many causes,
but surely a feeling of alienation in ones current abode – often felt be the millions of immigrants from
Africa, Asia and the poorer regions of Europe – is chief among them. As one passes through the
years of middle childhood and enters adolescence, a significant amount of time should be spent
dealing with issues of group membership and conflict.
In the workplace and in civil society respect is equally important. It is evident that organisations and
communities work more effectively when the individuals within them seek to understand one
another, to help one another, and to work together for common goals. Examples of positive
leadership are crucial here and clear penalties for disrespect. Also, respect within an organisation is
difficult to maintain when those outside the organisation are deemed the enemy. After all, ones
competitors are human too and after the next merger or takeover, you might find yourself inside the
former rival.
Also important in the workplace is how successful teamwork depends more on the management
skills than the technical expertise of their leaders. Team members respond favourably when their
suggestions are taken seriously and if they are encouraged to ask questions of one another, to
weigh the pros and cons of alternatives and to advocate positions other than their own, as this
approach promotes buy in once a decision has been made.
There is also the case of false respect when people will act respectfully when they have something
to gain from it, or who show respect in public settings, but revert back to stereotypical jokes when
they are in private. Political correctness refers to speaking and acting positively toward a certain
group just because that group has in the past been subjected to mistreatment.
A truly respectful individual offers the benefit of the doubt to all human beings. They avoid thinking in
group terms and remain open to the possibility that their past judgement of others may have been
wrong. They are alert for a change in behaviour that will reinstate a feeling of respect towards
others.
The Ethical Mind
The Ethical mind is able to merge roles at work and as a citizen and act consistently with those
conceptualisations, striving towards good work and good citizenship.
We all want to live in a world characterised by good work that is excellent, ethical and engaging.
Many people might look the picture of professionalism in an expensive suit with impeccable
manners, but if they are executing compromised work they are not ethical members of society. We
all need to be committed individuals who embody an ethical orientation in our work. This ethical
manner should also include civic roles where each of us should have the commitment to personally
work towards the realisation of a virtuous community that one can be proud of.
An ethical orientation begins at home where children observe their parents at their work and play
and in civic responsibilities. In contemporary society, peers and colleagues also assume importance
from an early age, and the quality of one’s peers proves especially critical during adolescence in the
development of ethical training.
There is no truly universal ethics or principles across all cultures and eras, yet a good worker does
generally have a set of principles and values that they can state explicitly that they live by. These
principles are consistent with one another and are kept in mind constantly. The worker is transparent
and does not hide what they are doing. Ethical workers are also not hypocritical but abide by their
guiding principles even when they go against their own self-interest.
Ethical talk often seems to go against the economic forces of self-interest that form an important part
of our modern societies. The markets can be cruel and hard. Jonathan Sacks said that “When
everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they
are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become
our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is
destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.”
Good work carried out ethically is easier when the worker is wearing a single occupational hat and
knows exactly what that hat does and does not entail. It is when a worker has the pressures of two
or more unaligned pressures (from clients and shareholders perhaps) that compromised work is
more likely to emerge. In the wake of scandals in the workplace, the call for ethics courses has been
ubiquitous. The business institutions charged with the education of individuals in business and the
professions need to respond to this request. However, to date, too many business schools have
been training managers in a purely technical manner and have been content to ignore ethical issues.
Any professional must be trained in the ethical mind for the good of the individual and society as a
whole.
Whether a person becomes a good worker depends on whether they are disposed to carry out good
work and are willing to keep on trying to achieve that end when the going gets tough. There are four
M’s that can help in the achievement of good work.
1. Mission – an individual should specify what he/she is trying to achieve in their activities. The
explicit knowledge of one’s goals will help the person to move forward in the right direction and avoid
trouble.
2. Models – it is important to have exposure to individuals who themselves embody good work.
3. Mirror test (individual) – the aspiring good worker must, from time to time, look into the mirror
and see whether they are proceeding in ways in which they approve and can feel proud of.
4. Mirror test (professional responsibility) – while a young worker may be doing good work
oneself, each person has a professional responsibility to report the unprofessional behaviour of
colleagues. There is an obligation to monitor what peers are doing and when necessary to call them
to account.
In conclusion, regarding the development of these 5 minds in the lives of a  young children, parents
and teachers should focus first on instilling a respectful mind, then a disciplined mind, followed by a
synthesising mind and finally, in secondary school, an emphasis on ethics. Creativity goes hand in
glove with disciplinary thinking. In the absence of relevant disciplines, it is not possible to be
genuinely creative and in the absence of creativity, disciplines can be used only to go over the status
quo.
While each person may have strengths in one or more area, we should all endeavour to develop a
balance of all 5 minds. Whatever their importance in times past, these five minds are likely to be
crucial in a world marked by the hegemony of science and technology, global transmission of
information, handling of routine tasks by computers and increasing contact between

Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future

Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at Harvard Graduate School of Education

(the Multiple Intelligences Guy) argues that in our rapidly changing world, the following five minds,

encapsulating skills, values, attitudes and knowledge, are crucial.

 The Disciplined Mind
 The Synthesizing Mind
 The Respectful Mind
 The Creating Mind
 The Ethical Mind

In his introduction, Gardner rightly points out that education is a very conservative profession. This is not

necessarily bad, he argues, because it means that centuries of practical knowledge has been assimilated

into the profession. However, when when conditions in the world are changing, educational change must

happen.

Gardner takes a swipe at policymakers who are unable to articulate the aims of education and who instead

use glib phrases about “using the mind well”, “having the skills to compete” and (the latest one) “leading
the world in international comparisons of test scores.” He then attacks the trend for emphasising science,

technology and maths teaching, arguing that none of them can develop a sense of values, nor can we

apply science to every area of life (I wonder if this is a veiled attack on standardized testing).

Excessive focus on science and technology reminds me of the myopia associated with ostriches or

Luddites. (p.15)

Like other writers I’ve come across, he argues that the current school system is preparing students for the

past, not the future:

I believe that current formal education still prepares students primarily for the world of the past, rather

than for possible worlds of the future.” (p.17)

The Disciplined Mind

Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and

will be restricted to menial tasks.

A disciplined mind has mastered a way of thinking about a specific scholarly discipline (such as history,

mathsm science, art), craft or profession (such as law, medicine, management, finance) and strives to

renew and refine this mastery. This thinking goes beyond knowledge, embracing the habits, skills,

processes and attitudes of a particular discipline, such as history, science or law. Gardner suggests that

mastery of a discpline takes at least ten years while renewing and refining is a lifelong process.

Gardner makes a distinction between the subject matter (facts) and the discipline (the thinking behind a

subject). For example, science as a discipline involves thought processes such as investigation, analysis,

questioning and the generation and testing of hypotheses as well as attitudes such as curiosity, as well as

scientific facts. Schools tend to focus too much on factual content at the expense of the processes and

attitudes: “we acknowledge the importance of science and technology but do not teach scientific ways of

thinking.”

Gardner points out that most students will not enter a specific discipline, such as science, history, law,

engineering or medicine, so should teachers teach disciplines such as history, maths and science on the

basis that some will need it even though the majority won’t? Or just to teach the facts and let students

fend for themselves when it comes to thinking.

Neither. Gardner’s argument is that schools should aim to provide students with a taste of what it is to

think like and feel like a scientist, a historian, an engineer or a lawyer (etc) by studying a limited number

of key topics in depth – substantial chunks of deep learning rather than vast swathes of shallow, fact-filled

learning – developing knowledge in key areas while developing the skills and attitudes that are part of the
discipline. He suggests that science, maths, history and an arts subject should be seen as gateways: a

topic on gravity introduces skills and attitudes used across science; a topic on the First World War

introduces skills and attitudes used across the social sciences. (an idea that lends support to the notion of

organizing the curriculum into areas of learning, which was suggested in the Rose interim report)into the

review of the primary curriculum in England). Gardner points to research indicating that students are

unable to apply what they have learned to topics they have not been directly taught: for example, they

cannot intelligently discuss the civil war in Rwanda after having been taught the American Civil War

because they haven’t developed the skills and thinking of a historian, only factual knowledge.

The trouble with the current curriculum is there is too much there, especially in Science. Science must

involve experimentation, the development and testing of hypotheses and simply being curious about the

world. But under time constraints imposed by looming tests, a tight timetable and a lengthy list of

curriculum objectives, it’s tempting to teach science as a body of facts that must be transmitted to the

students as quickly as possible. Gardner would argue that the latter approach is teaching the subject

matter of Science, not the discipline, since it doesn’t develop the processes or thinking of a scientist.

Gardner’s approach overcomes that, developing knowledge of key areas along with scientific thinking and

processes that can be applied to other areas of science; knowledge not covered can easily be found in

books and on websites on a need-to-know basis. Gardner also argues that the knowledge gained through

chunks of deep learning will be more meaningful, and thus will also breed a desire for more knowledge.

This is a powerful argument against fact-based learning. Facts, regardless of whether they are historical,

scientific, mathematical or literary facts, all require the same thinking skill (usually memorization and

recall) so more and more facts develops knowledge but keeps thinking at the same level. Secondly, even if

you were to teach all the curriculum objectives, there is always more knowledge to learn, and new

knowledge being created every day. To be able to understand this additional knowledge by oneself

requires the skills, habits, attitudes and processes of a disciplined mind (what others call a lifelong

learning skill), or else to make sense of new knowledge or to make decisions based on this knowledge

people will be totally dependent on others (eg tabloid journalists); Gardner suggests there is then no

difference between the responses of an educated person and an undeducated one; a disciplined mind is

what empowers an individual to think for themselves. Someone without a disciplined mind is

disempowered and may feel alienated, stupid and resentful. Facts are, in Gardner’s words “a useful

ornament”; a disciplined mind is “the Christmas tree”.

How to achieve a discliplined mind

1. Identify significant, consequential topics or concepts within a discipline: content or skills (eg the nature

of gravity, how to interpret a historical document)

2. Spend a significant amount of time on the topic. Study it deeply.

3. Approach the topic in different ways, eg by taking account of multiple intelligences. This engages all

students and enablces students to think about a topic in a variety of ways.

4. Set up “performances of understanding”. This gives evidence of and deepens understanding and allows

opportunities for formative assessment. It also gives students the opportunity to apply their skills and

knowledge to other contexts.

Here, in brief, is why most standardized measures of learning are of little use; they do not reveal whether

the student can actually make use of the classroom material – the subject matter – once she steps outside

the door (p.35)

The Synthesizing Mind

Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make

judicious decisions about personal or professional matters. (p.18)

Gardner uses a great quote from a navy captain about what it feels like to synthesize lots of information:

I have been through this wringer. Synthesizing massive amounts of data, intelligence, slants, opinions,

tactics, and trying to maintain a strategic big picture was a challenge. You feel it creeping up into your

brain like a numbing cold and you just have to choke it all down, sift faster, and stay with it. [It’s]

challenging to be sure, but if you practise it, you develop a good tool for the leadership toolbox. (p.46-47)

The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that

information (working out what’s important and reliable and what’s not), and puts the pieces together in a

way that is meaningful to the synthesizer (and possibly to others too, although here we are moving

towards the creative mind).

A synthesizing mind is crucial because of the vast amount of information available today, and growing

every day, from a wide range of sources. Gardner refers to the nineteenth century English scholar,

Matthew Arnold, perhaps the last person “to have known everything worth knowing.” Since Arnold’s day,

the massive expansion and dissemmination of knowledge makes such a feat impossible. Instead “ our

most talented minds know more and more about increasingly narrow spheres .”

Gardner lists a number of types of synthesis: narratives, taxonomies, concepts, rules, metaphors, non-

linguistic representations of ideas such as music and art, and theories.

And he lists the components of the synthesizing task: setting a goal of what the synthesis is trying to

achieve; the starting point (the work that you are trying to synthesize); selection of type of synthesis;

drafts and feedback.

How to achieve a synthesizing mind

Gardner notes how little attention synthesis gets in schools. He notes the use of projects and theme-

based curricula in schools and suggests the best way of using these to develop the synthesizing mind is to

give explicit instructions. For example, how to create rich narratives, powerful metaphors and non-

linguistic representations; and the components of synthesis. And he suggests that students should aim to

generate several representations of a synthesis to deepen understanding.

The Creating Mind

Individuals without creative capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who do

have the creative spark. (p. 18)

Ths Creating Mind puts forward new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, suggests fresh ways of thinking

and generates unexpected answers. Creativity is essential as it allows us to keep one step ahead of

computers and robots (not sure this argument works), although he also says that every task that can be

routinized eventually will be; creativity is not something that can be turned into routines.

Gardner explains that we should see creativity in a broad sense (not the Edward de Bono one-size-fits-all

approach). Problem solving is a creative endeavour; as are scientists who formulate a new theory. What

defines a creative person is really temperament, not skill:

The creator stands out in terms of temperament, personality and stance. She is perennially dissatisified

with current work, current standards, current questions, current answers. She strikes out in unfamiliar

directions and enjoys – or at least accepts – being different from the pack…There is a reason why so many

famous creators hated or dropped out of school – they did not like marching to someone else’s tune (and,

in turn, the authorities disliked their idiosyncratic marching patterns.All of us fail, and – because they are

bold and ambitious – creators fail the most frequently and, often, the most dramatically (p.83)

The implications for schools are clear: risk-taking and failure are natural parts of the creative process and

perhaps those bored by school, and drop out, are the very ones who need an infusion of creativity in the

classroom. And as Gardner points out, young children are natural creators – the task of the teacher is to

nurture this natural creativity (but, sadly, school squeezes it out of them).
Gardner’s suggestions for doing this in the classroom are disappointing though. He only goes as far as

proposing “sluices of creativity” rather than integrating creativity into the kind of project/topic-based

learning suggested for developing the disciplined mind.

[After early childhood] it is indeed appropriate to master literacies and the disciplines. However, even

during periods of drill, it is vital to keep open alternative possibilities and to foreground the option of

unfettered exploration (p.86)

He suggests encouraging children to take up creative pursuits or pursuits in which they might fail; by

bringing creative people into the classroom; through teachers suggesting alternative ways to solve maths

problems or interpret texts. This may be because of his belief that both a synthesizing mind and creating

mind need “a baseline of literacy and discipline”, but this implies that people can’t be effective

synthesizers or creators until they have at least partially mastered a discipline, which he asserts earlier in

the book takes at least ten years. “You can’t think out of the box until you have a box” (ie a discipline) as

he says in a video lecture. So I’m left wondering what place he feels creativity has in the classroom.

The Respectful Mind

Individuals without respects will be not worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the

commons. (p,19)

The respectful mind notes, welcomes and responds sympathetically and constructively to differences

between people and cultures. It seeks to understand different cultures and to work effectively with them,

In our globalized, connected world, the respectful mind is essential.

In the classrom, this mind can be developed through teachers modelling respectful behaviour (and

management to teachers!) and also by exposing students to materials from other cultures, primarily

through history, the arts and the humanities (presumably literature too).

The Ethical Mind

Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us

will want to live on that desolate planet. (p.19)

The ethical mind is more abstract than the respectful mind. It is more about meaning: our role as a

student, future worker and citizen; how we can serve a greater, common good that goes beyond self-

interest