By Howard Gardner

Summary

Five Minds For The Future

Howard Gardner, the Harvard professor who gave us multiple intelligences in 1993’s Frames of Mind, is still thinking about thinking. Insisting he has no crystal ball, he evidently peers into someone else’s to see what kinds of mental abilities—which he calls minds—will be needed in the future.
       
The result is a list of five distinct thinking skills that Gardner says both students and adults need to develop: a disciplined mind that has mastered the distinctive way of thinking that characterizes a specific skill or scholarly discipline; a synthesizing mind that finds new meaning in information gathered from different sources; a creating mind that “puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers”; a respectful mind that welcomes differences between individuals and tries to work effectively with them; and an ethical mind that ponders how people “can serve purposes beyond self-interest ... and work unselfishly to improve the lot of all.”      

Some readers might lose patience with Gardner’s penchant for categorizing and labeling thought processes. (His discourses on “multiperspectivalism” and “synthesizing tracks” would send Noah Webster himself to the dictionary.) But legions of Howard Gardner fans will surely treasure the MacArthur genius’s latest thoughts on thinking.