Five Minds for the Future

an excerpt from "Five Minds for the Future" (2007)

DEVELOPING OUR CHILDREN’S MINDS

First, an excerpt from “Five Minds for the Future” (2007), a new book by Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and creator of the famous theory about Multiple Intelligences (MIs).

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking – a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft or profession. Much research confirms that it takes up to ten years to master a discipline. The disciplined mind also knows how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding – in the vernacular, it is highly disciplined. Without at least one discipline under his belt, the individual is destined to march to someone else’s tune. The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates. Building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers. Ultimately, these creations must find acceptance among knowledgeable consumers. By virtue of its anchoring in territory that is not yet rule-governed, the creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots. Recognizing that nowadays, one can no longer remain within one’s shell or on one’s home territory, the respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, tries to understand these “others,” and seeks to work effectively with them. In a world where we are all interlinked, intolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option. Proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind, the ethical mind ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives. This mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the lot of all. The ethical mind then acts on the basis of these analyses. One may reasonably ask: Why these five particular minds? Could the list be readily changed or extended? My brief answer is this: the five minds just introduced are the kinds of minds that are particularly at a premium in the world of today and will be even more so tomorrow. They span both the cognitive spectrum and the human enterprise – in that sense, they are comprehensive, global. We know something about how to cultivate them. Of course, there could be other candidates. In research for this book, I considered candidates ranging from the technological mind to the digital mind, the market mind to the democratic mind, the flexible mind to the emotional mind, the strategic mind to the spiritual mind. I am prepared to defend my quintet vigorously. Indeed, that is a chief burden of the rest of this book. This may also be the place to forestall an understandable confusion. My chief claim to fame is my positing, some years ago, of a theory of multiple intelligences (MIs). According to MI theory, all human beings possess a number of relatively autonomous cognitive capabilities, each of which I designate as a separate intelligence. For various reasons people differ from one another in their profiles of intelligence, and this fact harbours significant consequences for school and the workplace. When expounding on the intelligences, I was writing as a psychologist and trying to figure out how each intelligence operates within the skull. The five minds posited in this book are different from the eight or nine human intelligences. Rather than being distinct computational capabilities, they are better thought of as broad uses of the mind that we can cultivate at school, in professions, or at the workplace. To be sure, the five minds make use of our several intelligences: for example, respect is impossible without the exercise of interpersonal intelligences. And so, when appropriate, I will invoke MI theory. But for much of this book, I am speaking about policy rather than psychology, and, as a consequence, readers are advised to think about those minds in the manner of a policymaker, rather than a psychologist….

Does Wee Care help to cultivate “Five Minds for the Future” amongst its pre-schoolers? Well, to answer this question, let us analyse the learning activities from a week of classes here at the Centre:

It’s Monday! And some of the children in Bright Starts III are learning to subtract 2 from any number in the number-range 2 to 10. To acquire this skill effectively, Teacher Ruth reviews the meaning (quantity) of the number 2 with her group. She reviews counting forwards and counting backwards. After that, she gives concrete and visual examples to illustrate that subtraction involves “taking away”. She uses balls, blocks, apples and toy-cars. After that, the children each get an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of subtraction by “taking away” quantities asked for by Teacher Ruth. They call out their final answers triumphantly.

What sort of Mind do you think this activity has tried to encourage? I believe it must be the Disciplined Mind. Though our children are far too young to be considered scholars or masters of a discipline, subjects like Mathematics encourage the process-skill of thinking along logical lines. This “distinctive mode of cognition”, important in disciplines such as Medicine and Engineering, can begin in pre-school, with the acquisition of basic concepts through tangible, concrete examples first.

On Tuesday, the children in Bright Starts I and II are the first to witness the weekly changes to the Open Learning playroom. This week, the creative-play centres provide scenes of a shoe-shop as well as a cobbler’s and carpenter’s workshop. They whoop with joy when their teacher gives them the go-ahead to play. In every corner, the children symbolize their thoughts in imaginary actions: customers buying slippers or high-heels, cobblers hammering away attentively at patched soles and carpenters sawing and painting cardboard pieces of wood. The hum of creativity is apparent. When a child starts to spontaneously draw a quirky shoe at the Art & Craft table, as when another invites a pal to build a “car-bridge” with blocks from the carpenter’s shop, we see the genesis of the Creating Mind unfold. Will our six-year-old graduates be able to think in fresh ways, as Gardner postulates, to arrive at unexpected answers, not just today, but also one day in their adulthood, when the need for cures or solutions to world problems such as food shortages becomes an imperative? Surely the courage to think out of the box may well have begun in open-ended modes of learning, and simple acts of Pretend Play.

Wednesday arrives, and today, the children in all age-groups embark on a Life Skills project to raise funds for a charity organization. They follow their teacher’s instructions to cut, categorise and pack the little gifts for sale, neatly and carefully. Next week, when the charity organization visits to present their work at the Centre, the children will learn that there are children around the world who suffer in ways that they themselves could never imagine. They will see something of the effects of war, natural disasters and poverty on innocent lives, and as they ponder the state of the human condition, so they may well be thinking like an Ethical Mind should; how it is possible to live with a clear, strong sense of self and purpose to help others, make wrongs right, and establish a positive difference in the world in their lifetime.

Thursday is Mandarin day at Wee Care. But this Thursday is all the more special, because a new friend joins the group. He is brown-haired and dark-skinned, and his admission papers indicate the presence of a clinical condition called Dyspraxia. The group’s new friend speaks with difficulty and cannot walk, run or climb as fast as others his age. As the teachers make a place for him in the song-circle at the start of the day, the children are encouraged to say “hello” and shake his hand one at a time. When he stumbles over some of the steps in the dance, no one laughs or stares. A teacher holds his hand in one of hers, whilst keeping an eye on the others in the group who are moving and shaking to the beat without reservation. Later, when another child asks why it takes so long for New Friend to walk down the stairs, the teacher explains that he needs some help, and can you help by waiting for him? The emerging Respectful Mind nods his head acceptingly, and later buddies up to New Friend by accompanying him to the toilet. It makes no difference the colour of their hair, skin or eyes, nor their inherent capabilities or incapacities. All are one and equal, and each is as dearly valued as the other.

On Friday, the children in Head Starts I and II complete their Project on Potatoes. They are asked to draw their final version of what a potato looks like. They are also encouraged to state or write out a number of comments and observations about what they learnt and experienced through the Project. Some of the children write about what they cooked using potatoes. Others talk about the funny creatures they made using pipe-cleaners, sequins and feathers on large Russet potatoes. When all of what is said and talked about is documented on paper, the worksheets are compiled into a folder. The children decorate the front-covers of their files enthusiastically. Later today, they will take their folders home and show them to their parents.

Gardner writes, in his excerpt above, that the Synthesizing Mind puts information together, so that it “make(s) sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons”. By encouraging the children to sum-up and document all that has been seen, heard and talked about in each Project, both through drawings and oral/written language, teachers of the Project Approach here at Wee Care cultivate their students’ ability to synthesize (put together) as well as assimilate and accommodate (imbue) new knowledge, in organized ways.

As you play with your child today, ask yourself, “What sort of a mind-set am I developing right now?” For all you know, that simple act of putting a scrap-book together, or talking about your family’s new neighbour, is developing a significant Mind for the Future. Happy Parenting!

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For more information on the Bright Starts Programme for ages 2-4yo, please visit our website at www.weecare.com.sg.