But even young children are part of communities – home, school classroom or church – and they can be acculturated into the ideals, attitudes, and behaviours appropriate to their roles within these communities.

– Five Minds for the Future

…for optimal results, the focus and starting point of improving the quality of thinking ought to be the children.

– Thinking: Bioengineering of Science and Art

 This morning, two toddlers were on their way to school with their mother. The smell of refuse was in the air and this prompted the younger of the siblings to instinctively say, Smelly. To this, the mother responded with something like: Can you imagine what it must be like for the poor uncles who clear the rubbish?

She could have ignored or agreed with the comment or simply urged the kids to move along considering how, all the child was doing was an objective and neutral appraisal. Instead, she transformed the situation into a teachable moment for her kids to imbue the value of empathy and to see beyond the instant experience.

Howard Gardner, an American developmental psychologist whose work has transformed education, most famously known for his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, might say that this mother, in that moment, was developing the respectful mind in her children, one of five minds Gardner says are necessary for the twenty-first century.

Gardner elaborated on the five minds which are different from the nine intelligences in his book, Five Minds for the Future, one of others in The Leadership for Common Good series. His interview on the Five Minds among his other ideas for education, was published in the EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, this year.

The five minds he believes are crucial for our time are, the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind (Gardner, 2006).

He explained at the outset that the development of each of these minds would facilitate the development of the others.

Even though his book was published more than a decade ago, his ideas are very relevant. For instance, of respect, he says, “Intimately and inextricably connected to others, we need to be able to communicate with one another, live with one another, and where possible, make common cause” (Gardner, 2008).

A simple and hopefully not overly simplistic way of understanding what he means by mind is a way of processing information. He believes the capacity to process information in certain ways must be developed from young and honed across the lifetime.

Of the disciplined mind, he says learners must be disciplined in 3 ways. First, they must to the extent possible, gain mastery in a discipline – field of knowledge. Someone who knows a lot of one field would be able to understand the rules and their origins and be able to experiment with them for creative outcomes.

He also recommends that learners try to gain mastery of more than one discipline such that they can “integrate two or more disciplines.” In their book, Super Thinking Weinberg and McCann explicate the different ways of thinking employed in different disciplines.

Second, learners must have the discipline to continually strive to be better today compared to yesterday in their field. There is now more awareness and acceptance of what he had said at the turn of the century regarding the need for life-long learning.

Third, he adds that discipline mastery is, in addition to subject-matter knowledge also a deep familiarity with the ways of working in that discipline. This is the discipline referred to in disciplined thinking.

Of the synthesizing mind, he says, learners must learn to put together information from different disciplines or sources. One way to do this is to consider intra-disciplinary cultural differences. For example, someone who is familiar with both east and west would be able to see the connection between the flypaper and the cicada.

Persons who have mastery (given it is difficult to use the word, ‘mastered’) over more than one discipline would have an advantage in synthesizing. Even for those who do not, Gardner has recommendations on how to go about synthesizing.

He says when synthesizing, the synthesizer must ask the following questions. What is the problem which this information is meant to solve? What are the kinds of information which are necessary for the solution. Who and which are the sources which are credible? What is the big picture and how much detail is necessary?

One insight Gardner shares about synthesis is that it is not enough to merely synthesize in a work setting. Organization and presentation are important. One skill which students learn in secondary school which lends itself to synthesizing is summary writing. Students have to select relevant information from different paragraphs in a text and organise it in a reader-friendly way. They can also be taught to present their summaries (or synthesis of information from different sources for a specific purpose) in the form of “charts, graphs, and captionless cartoons” (Gardner, 2008). Learning to do so will prepare them for the world of work where different modes of presentation would be more effective for different audiences (Gardner, 2008).

Of the creative mind, Gardner’s insight is that apart from learning relevant processes in a disciplined way, a certain personality is required. He says that a “robust temperament” is necessary. Someone with a robust temperament would over and over again, choose to, “venture into the unknown, to fail, and then, perhaps smiling, to pick themselves up and once more throw themselves into the fray” (Gardner, 2008). According to Gardner, given that creativity involves breaking with convention, different societies need to focus on different things to cultivate it. In societies where the value of creativity is well-known, “more emphasis on disciplines” – committing more to disciplined study would be more useful (Gardner, 2008).

Of the respectful mind, Gardner says, “the attitudes of the peers and elders to whom he or she is closest, determine whether he or she likes, admires, or respects certain individuals and groups”.  He believes that a respectful mind would be willing to accord trust (until it is shown to be misplaced) in the face of diversity. His conception of respect goes beyond following rules to actively seeking to make connections with those who are considered ‘outgroup’.

Gardner also emphasises the role of the environment in shaping the ethics of students. He says, “When adults are reflective about their decisions, and explicitly cite moral concerns, young people get the message…”

To consolidate, a young person today could practise the following to develop the five minds – read widely, looking actively for similarities and connections between what is read, mix widely, focusing on similarities while appreciating and learning from differences, be willing to consider as feasible, a wider range of options and have a wider perspective on success and failure.

Going wide is not always a bad thing.

The Brain Dojo