Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.
Howard Gardner
If you understand something well, you can represent it, describe it, embody it in several ways. Indeed, if you can only present it in one way, then your own mastery is likely to be tenuous.
Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader's toolkit.
When we teach in pluralistic ways, there are two wonderful dividends. First of all, we reach more students, because some learn best through stories, some through works of art, some through role play etc. Second of all, we show what it is like really to understand something.
A lot of knowledge in any kind of an organization is what we call task knowledge. These are things that people who have been there a long time understand are important, but they may not know how to talk about them. It's often called the culture of the organization.
I make fun of Mensa. I don't know a great deal about Mensa - that's the high IQ group - but I say, 'To get into Mensa, you have to have a high IQ, and once you get in, you spend your time congratulating people who are in Mensa with you.' To me that's a pretty stupid way to spend your life.
Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.
Kids go to school and college and get through, but they don't seem to really care about using their minds. School doesn't have the kind of long term positive impact that it should.
Since we all have different cognitive profiles, educators should take those individual differences very seriously.
If we want to have good workers and good citizens, we need to create common spaces in which individuals can talk about the moral and ethical dilemmas that they have faced and how they resolve them.
The biggest communities in which young people now reside are online communities.
If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.
I am basically a supporter of Barack Obama - it is not easy to be a post-partisan president in a hyper-partisan era.
For many, perhaps most, Americans, markets are sacrosanct. Most people in the United States cannot even envision a society that doesn't revolve around an untrammeled market.
Much of education can and should take place in schools and other formally designated community institutions. But the world beyond the schoolhouse is crucial to education, and both traditional and new media are more important than ever.
I favor a system where students in publicly funded institutions make a commitment: if they do well in the private sector, they will revert a certain percentage of their income to the education sector; and if they devote some years to public service, their debt will be forgiven.
It's important to underscore that it is not mediocre test scores that have caused the major problems in the U.S. It has been unnecessary wars, ranging from Vietnam to Iraq, and unfair financial practices on Wall Street. And these were brought about by 'the best and the brightest,' many of whom were educated at my own institution.
We are not going to get rid of the digital media - nor should we want to - and so our challenge is to use the media to determine the truth, rather than to let the media obfuscate matters.
The countries who do the best in international comparisons, whether it's Finland or Japan, Denmark or Singapore, do well because they have professional teachers who are respected, and they also have family and community which support learning.
Truth is about propositions. When it comes to determining truth, it is vital to understand the methods used by individuals in asserting propositions.
Students should learn about the long-standing values of truth, beauty, and goodness, think hard about them, and interrogate them skillfully.
Twenty-five years ago, the notion was you could create a general problem-solver software that could solve problems in many different domains. That just turned out to be totally wrong.
The problems in our educational system are indissociable from broader malignant trends in our society, and they can't be solved by lots of testing and by punitive actions against schools that are not performing well.
While I've worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.
In a large country like the United States or India, families differ significantly on their own education values, and I don't believe it is necessary to put everyone through the same curricula and assessments.
Every child needs to become literate in one or more languages, and every child should become comfortable in the major scholarly disciplines - historical, scientific, mathematical, and artistic-humanistic thinking. Beyond that, I am not in favour of a uniform system. I think there should be some choices.
As history unfolds, as cultures evolve, of course the intelligences which they value change.
I believe that the brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc.
For most, the school is the first model of a community, and it can be a very powerful one. We need to ensure that young people are raised in educational communities that they admire and that they will seek to emulate or re-create for the rest of their lives.
On the basis of research in several disciplines, including the study of how human capacities are represented in the brain, I developed the idea that each of us has a number of relatively independent mental faculties, which can be termed our 'multiple intelligences.'
By nature, I am not an optimist, though I try to act as if I am.
If we were to abandon concern for what is true, what is false, and what remains indeterminate, the world would be totally chaotic. Even those who deny the importance of truth, on the one hand, are quick to jump on anyone who is caught lying.
The accumulation and cross-generational transmission of wealth in the United States has gone way too far. When a young hedge-fund manager can take home a sum reminiscent of the gross national product of a small country, something is askew.
I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.
Since the dawn of civilization, markets have been ubiquitous. Many of us have benefited from their focus and efficiency. Yet two widely held beliefs - that markets are best left unregulated and that markets are inherently benign - are naive and outdated.
I need to add that my work on multiple intelligences received a huge boost in 1995 when Daniel Goleman published his book on emotional intelligence. I am often confused with Dan. Initially, though Dan and I are longtime friends, this confusion irritated me.
Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.
I am knowledgeable enough about the world of prizes to realize that there is a large degree of luck - both for the recognitions that you receive and those that you did not.
I'd rather see the United States as a beacon of good work and good citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.
My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.
I am trained as a psychologist, and I think of all human issues in terms of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary theory.
It's absolutely clear to me that Obama has enormous intrapersonal intelligence. His book, 'Dreams from My Father,' is an amazing book, and it's obvious to everybody he has lots of intrapersonal intelligence.
Contradictory precepts that have guided me for as long as I can remember: 1: I will live forever. 2: I will die tomorrow.
