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Book Review

Gardner, Howard. (2000). The Disciplined Mind

Beyond Facts and tandarized Test the K-12E Education that Every Child Deserves

Avelina Teston-Llagas, Ed.D.

Consultant, TIP, Teacher Educatbon Counil

Department of Educabon Penguin Books New York, U.SA. Third Edition Pearson / Memil Prentice Hal, New Jersey

We want to educate youngsters so that they can cope successfully with a world that has matically and that is aready changed changing more rapidly still. If the community is to make informed decisions, we must determine what has been learned about hunman beings by psychology (the study of the mind), hiology (the study of the brain and the genes), and anthropology (the study of different cultures). Indeed, in an age of contiuing scientific advances, it would be delinquent not to attend to these sources of information, equally delinquent to

attend to one while excluding the others. (Gardner, 2000)

C Gardner synthesizes

over thirty years of rescarch in the

cognitive and biological science and

over fifteen years of involvement

in precollegiate education." He

espouses three concerns that animate

education- realm of truth, beauty,

and morality. In his discussion he

uses Charles Darwin's evolution for

Gardner devotes a chapter on

the Perspectives of Mind and Brain.

He argues that "decisions about what

to teach, when to teach and even

how to teach entail value judgments."

His philosophy of education appears

to be the basis of his Theory of

Multiple Intelligences. He comments

that emotional sensitivities and

DISCIPLINED

MIND

the realm of truth; Mozart's opera

The Marriage of Figaro

realm of beauty and the Holocaust

for the realm of morality.

In the discussion of the realms

Howard

Gardner

cognitive capacities have been

thoroughly documented but when

"it comes to the highest cognitive

like metamemory or

for the

functions,

creativity," brain science has yet to

make contributions.

he underscores the relationship of

truth, beauty and goodness to wit: The relationship

between the virtue of truth, on the one hand, and

the virtues of beauty and goodness, on the other, is

a vexed one. In modern secular society, we tend to

see these as separate domains-loosely speaking, as

science, art, and morality. Enlightenment and pOs- Italy to wit:

Enlightenment thinking has designated a separate,

autonomous realm comprising reason, science,

This writer recommends teachers and teacher

educators, as well as external stakeholders in their

advocacy of the K to 12 Basic Education Program of

DepEd to read Gardner's chapter on How Cultures

Educate describing "the best preschools in the world

and universalization of preschool in Reggio Emilia,

In each of the classes in a school, groups of

children spend several months exploring a theme of

knowledge, and truth; aesthetics and moray are interest. These themes are ones that attract young

cleaved off or minimized as emotional, Subjecive, children, usually because they offer rich sensory

stimulation and raise intriguing puzzle. Among the

many dozens of motifs that have been investigated over the years (and sometimes on a number of

separate occasions) are sunlight, rainbows, raindrops,

shadows, the city, a city of ants, the town lions that

preside over the central piazza of Reggio, poppy

fields, an amusement park for birds built by the

youngsters, and the operation of the fax machine.

The children approach these questions and phenomena

that arise in the course of their explorations; and

they end up creating artful objects that capture their

interests and their learning: drawings. paintings,

cartoons, charts, photographic series, toy models,

replicas-indeed, representatives of an ever expanding,

(Continued next page)

or particularistic; and the relationship between

goodness" and "beauty" is seen as problematic at

best. Many (including those of contrasting politica

persuasions) see morality as the concern of the home

and or the church and seek to dissociate it altogether

from the school.

He recalls these educational constants that would

sult to "high universal standards." He underscores

that science and technology do not merely alter

conceptions of what is true. New roles are spawned

and traditional values are challenged;

possibilities are altered and aesthetic sensibilities

may be affected as well. "Globalization is here

wnich requires understanding, critical thinking and

creativity of individuals.

"moral

THE PROFESSIONAL TEACHER 45

Vol. IV Number 1

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Did you know that.. (from p. 34)

unpredictable series of genres

He describes the development of critical thinking

and creativity in infant primary schools and secondary

schools in France, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Italy,

England, Israel and USA.

He expresses his vision, thus

Visions of school will difer enormously depending on history, locale, curricular needs and desires

available resources, and cultural and individual goals. And the beliefs and attitudes embodied each day by

parents and teachers will have at least as strong an

infhuence on the texture of the school and the kinds

of youngsters that emerge.

He discusses "teaching for understanding" needed

for critical thinking leading to creativity, to wit:

To move toward enhanced understanding, one must

again adopt both cognitive and cultural perspectives. One must identify those internal representations in

need of alteration; construct cultural practices that

confront, rather than overlook, the obstacles to deeper understanding; and devise measures to determine

whether the "corrective cognitive surgery" has been

effective. This discussion leads to his Theory of

Multiple Intelligence Approaches to understanding. He concludes with his vision of education:

highly creative adults frequently grew up with

hardship. Hardship by itself doesn't lead to

creativity, but it does force kids to become more

flexible-and flexibility helps with creativity.

In early childhood, distinct types of free

play are associated with high creativity.

Preschoolers who spend more time in role- play (acting out characters) have higher

measures of creativity: voicing someone else's

point of view helps develop their ability to

analyze situations from different perspectives.

-Source: http://www.thedailybreast.com.

newsweek/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.htm

*.

The typical classroom is not set up to encourage

creativity. Psychologists conducted a survey of

teachers. When asked whether they wanted

creative kids in their classroom, everyone said yes.

But when the same teachers were asked to rate

their students on a variety of personality measures,

the traits most closely aligned with creative thinking

(such as being freely expressive) were closely

associated with their "least favorite" student. This

What is required of human beings for tomorrow,

and what we now know about the minds, brains,

and cultures of students and teachers, calls for a

fundamentally different kind of education. Such future

accented education requires not only a mastery of the

most important disciplinary forms but the capacity

to use these flexibly to solve new problems and to

create new lines of thought. Education will never be

completely a science, but it borders on malpratice

to design education that is backward-looking and

that ignores what we now understand about how the

mind constructs and reconstructs knowledge. It was to

address the needs and opportunities of tomorrow that

I developed the vision set forth in these pages.

The Disciplined Mind sets the standards for

creative and critical thinking, humanely and

comprehensively, about education-quality basice

education. The sub-title Beyond Facts and Standarized

Tests, the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves expresses his belief that the " quality of a nation's

educational system will be a chief determinant of its

success during the next century and beyond." Can

we say the statement rings a bell loud and clear

for the Philippine educational system in its second

year of phased implementation of the K to 12 Basic

Education Reform? #

shows that judgments for their "favorite student" were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the "least favorite student" were

positively correlated with creativity.

Source: Jonah Lehreer

http://www.newjokes.com

*.

Answer Key on Are You a Creative and a Critical Thinker? from page 33)

1. Zero, any number less than and including 1.000001, any fraction less than a whole, or any negative number.

2. a.) split decion b.) one after another 3. 299. The pattern involves a difference of 6 to 5, getting 11, then add 6 to 11.

getting 17, then add 6 to 17, getting 23,

etc., until 6 has been added 50 times ending in 299. Answer explanations wi

vary.

Deck, desk

The goat

6. Tricky Problems

46 THE PROFESSIONAL TEACHER Vol. IV Number 1