Tuesday, March 1, 2011

"The Disciplined Mind" Chapter 3

Note: I decided to read some more Gardner, so I picked up and have been enjoying The Disciplined Mind. I thought it might be interesting to try out a chapter review instead of an article for a change, with half a mind on how it would feel to review a whole book.

The Disciplined Mind, Chapter 3 (pg. 41-59) by Howard Gardner
Simon & Schuster, 1999. New York, NY.

Intended Audience: thinkers, educators, policymakers

Summary: In chapter 3, "Education in the Future," Gardner continues to set up his position with regards to our current educational system and where he sees it going. He introduces six major themes that he sees as modern (circa 1999) issues affecting schooling now and into the immediate future. Before introducing these, he makes the interesting claim that although there have been many "trendy practices," these have proven "vapid if not useless or damaging" (pg. 42). Separate from this group but still in the "trendy" category, he mentions specifically that Montessory, Steiner, Dewey, and others have "had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world." He goes on to say that the current era is characterized by such rapid and drastic change, in contrast to the recent past, that his six themes must affect that same world.

Key Points:
  • Technological and Scientific Breakthroughs: the first theme he mentions, and the most obvious. It's fun to read his twenty-year-old list and watch as he lists, awestruck, CD players and other fairly outdated equipment.
  • Political Trends: Gardner's second theme, and another fairly straightforward one. He encourages the reader to look at a very slightly expanded time scale and consider how different it must have been to teach history in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, and in the 1990s.
  • Economic Forces: "Students must be educated so that they can participate and survive in [the] unrelentingly Darwinian environment"(47) of the modern economic world. Gardner stresses globalization of commerce, and reminds us how this resonates in areas only recently brought under consideration-- such as the environment. He also brings up the idea that what is valuable to employers are skills increasingly knowledge- rather than labor-based. Suggests that students must be educated to deal well with an increasingly commercial world.
  • Social, Cultural, and Political Trends in the Modern Era: Gardner brings in some points from previous themes and describes how they combine to create an increasingly exposed world; it is more and more difficult to be an isolated, un-influenced culture. Some cultures react to this with xenophobia, some assimilate ideas but retain a unique identity, and some join in the fray gladly.
  • The Shifting Cartography of Knowledge: The "last man in the world to know anything" was Matthew Arnold, who died in 1888 (52-53). The information within disciplines expands at impossible rates. While it is still "appropriate to continue to teach disciplinary thinking in high school and perhaps even college," (53) the most successful students (and software programs) will be able to make quick decisions about what is actually useful, and what should be discarded as useless.
  • Beyond Modernism: A Postmodern Jag and The View From Multiculturalism: I am leaving these themes out, as Gardner starts diverging a bit from his mission in introducing the other themes, and falling back on quite a bit of personal philosophy. But read it if you are interested in a light, good description of postmodernism and what Gardner's stance is on it (he's a middle-grounder), and what it means to curriculum.
Relevance: We are reading a bit of Gardner in 561, and he is clearly an influential character in the field. Beyond that, he continues to be an exciting read-- this book is based on his ideas that education should rest fundamentally on the pursuit of the true, the beautiful, and the good; basic literacies aren't excluded by this, and it remains up to each individual to assess what represents those three traits in her culture and situation. He keeps throwing stuff out there that is both challenging and makes me go "Yes!" and it's always fun to read something like that.

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