How Does Distance Learning Affect Education?

I recently received the following question about distance learning and MI theory.

I am a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Since the pandemic has transformed many educational activities into distance learning, I am doing research about Multiple Intelligences (MI) in distance learning based on your MI theory. I have been wondering if distance learning would strengthen, weaken, or make a twist regarding MI. I am starting with musical and logical-mathematical intelligences.
Could you please offer some suggestions or related materials that I can use to guide my research?
Thank you

This is a good question. It's not really about MI per se, but rather about how distance learning affects education altogether. We are fortunate to live in a time when one can send all kinds of messages in various media over long distances—this would not have been possible even thirty years ago. What we don’t know is how much of learning, particularly for young children, depends on a more personal contact with elders and with peers. I suspect that for many young children, it will be difficult to sit in front of a computer or tablet and focus for significant periods of time. This would not be very difficult for most doctoral students!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The Intelligences of Making Music: A Personal Exploration

From an early age, music has been very important in my life. After picking out tunes on a neighbor’s piano, I began to study piano formally when I was barely seven years old; and by the time that I was 12, I was already quite accomplished. At that point, I had to decide whether to work much more diligently (travel for hours to take lessons, practice each day for 3 hours). I decided I did not want to to pursue piano, especially with that much dedication, and I have never regretted that decision. (I would not have liked the life of a professional pianist). Throughout adolescence and into my early adult years, I played the piano quite regularly; also, to make extra money, I offered piano lessons to a few persons.

Then, adulthood intervened. While I still listened regularly to music—mostly classical, but also jazz and “show tunes,” and played the piano when I had some spare moments—I did not practice pieces that I had once mastered, nor did I learn many new ones.  I was, so to speak, “on hold” for half a century.

Then, about seven years ago, when I turned 70, I returned to more regular practice of the piano—a half hour to an hour each day that I was at home. I played pieces that I had once studied, but also tried to learn new ones. This “change of mind, ear, and hand” occurred for a number of reasons:

1. As I was moving toward retirement, I had fewer obligations and more time to play and even to practice.

2. A friend  of mine, a much better pianist, lost the use of one of his arms, and could not play any  longer. I said to myself, “I had better play while I still can.”

3. I read a book by Alan Rusbridger, a well known journalist, in which he chronicled his efforts to master a difficult Chopin ballade. “Play it Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible” served as an unlikely but effective spur.

I’m pleased that I am playing the piano again. I enjoy the respite each day. Especially during the time of COVID-19 and political turmoil in the US and in the rest of the world, I can escape to a different zone of thoughts and feelings. I don’t play well, but at least I am not getting worse.  My wife, family, friends, and neighbors (in our apartment building) don’t seem to mind—and that’s a relief. A lot of time is spent replaying pieces I once knew, and they are easier to play—my fingers remember them, even when I don’t. But I also tackle new pieces, unless they are clearly too difficult. I don’t try to master any of the pieces—I opt for quantity rather than quality. I could easily write about my current and aspiring repertoire, but that’s for another occasion.

So what, if any, are the links to the several intelligences?

Clearly, any involvement with music involves various facets of musical intelligence. I am lucky to have been born with a reasonable amount of musical intelligence. (As a child I had perfect pitch, I began by teaching myself how to play, and I quickly mastered the easier repertoire.) I also played the accordion quite fluently (still have my squeeze box), performed on the organ at my temple, and also learned the basics of flute playing in high school band class.

But like any complex human activity, serious piano playing involves a medley and melding of intelligences. On my analysis, here’s the involvement—or perhaps I should say, “hypothesized involvement,” of several other intelligences:

• Bodily kinesthetic: I am not at all athletic and never was. (For a possible explanation, see the opening chapters of my memoir, A Synthesizing Mind.) But I have considerable digital dexterity, which I draw on for hours each day at the keyboards at both computer and piano. And as arthritis sets in, I worry about when these two forms of finger exercise will be increasingly challenged.

• Linguistic: At the very least, one needs linguistic intelligence to read instructions as well as other aspects of musical symbolization, such as performance instructions. In playing program music or in accompanying singing, the words and phrases matter. And I read a good deal about musical history, biography, and performance—and talk about these facets with friends who are involved with music

• Spatial: In a literal sense, piano playing involves little mastery of space—to be sure, one does not want to fall off the bench or get otherwise disoriented.  But many analysts, including me,  conceptualize musical compositions in spatial terms—as it were, one is navigating a complex space, with themes emerging, switching register, returning in various forms at various points in the aural space. We navigate compositions, just as we navigate neighborhoods or natural spaces. One might consider this a metaphoric use of space. (I should add that, unlike a majority of musicians, I have never thought of compositions as involving actual stories—such as the adventures of people or animals—my engagement is at a more abstract level).

• The personal intelligences: If one performs with others, or for others, one is certainly dealing with the human dimensions—what I’ve termed interpersonal intelligence. (In the times I have played with others, I have keenly felt the need for skills of empathy and communication.) And even if, like me at the piano, you are basically free of an audience, you yourself are an audience—and one automatically grades oneself on the performance of the day, compared to others by you or by other performers. (These are dimensions of intra-personal intelligence.) Also, as one gets to know specific composers, there is also a conversation with the creators of music—though whether that conversation is completely one-sided is a philosophical puzzle.

So much for the original list of the seven intelligences, as laid out in Frames of Mind, almost 40 years old.   Since then I have speculated about three additional other intelligences, each of which merits brief mention:

• Naturalist: I defined this as the capacity to make consequential distinctions in the world of nature—among plants, animals etcetera—and/or to draw on these computational capacities in the man-made world—as one scans, discriminates among, and purchases products. Not only do composers often try to riff off of living beings or elements of nature—but the genres of music are a metaphoric extension of the natural world (the seasons, time of day or night, passage of time). As mentioned, I don’t think of compositions as entailing narratives, but I do group compositions in terms of more abstract concepts—what philosopher Susanne Langer labelled “the forms of feeling” which resemble “natural kinds”.

• Pedagogical: One can be an outstanding musician without being able to teach music to others. And some musicians stand out as teachers, rather than as performers. I’ve taught piano—it is not easy, and I was not a very good instructor. But as with teaching psychology, one can get better—pedagogical intelligence is teachable, learnable.

• Existential: Not disposed to insert a religious dimension into the world of multiple intelligences, I have used this term to denote an interest in “big, philosophically-nuanced questions”—ones having to do with life, death, love, joy, anguish. Works of music (instrumental as well as vocal) differ enormously with respect to whether they deal with such issues. Similarly, those involved in music differ enormously in the extent to which that involvement is simply fun enjoyment (advertising jingles, Musak for the dental office), as opposed to wrestling with the largest puzzles and deepest emotions of life (Wagner, Mahler). As someone of a German background, also most deeply involved with German composers, music clearly has an existential dimension for me. And this “beyond the mundane” aspiration may be true especially about classical music and religious music.

So, that’s my checklist for MI and music. I also have reflections on how these have changed over the span of my life (seven decades at the keyboard), but I’ll save those for another day.

© Howard Gardner 2020

The Costs of Meritocracy: Two Destructive Forms of Being “Smart”

By Howard Gardner (with comment by Michael Sandel)

Michael Sandel, highly esteemed political philosopher at Harvard, has written The Tyranny of Meritocracy—a powerful indictment of contemporary society—especially the versions in the United States and England. In this provocative book, Sandel reflects at length about the importance nowadays of being “smart.” As one who has spent four decades critiquing the use of the word “intelligent” I paid careful attention to Sandel’s words and his case.

Coined in the middle 1950s by British social analyst Michael Young, “meritocracy” denotes a state of affairs: a once aristocratic, inherited society is taken over by individuals presumed to be more talented and more appropriate leaders for the various sectors of the sector. At first blush, this transfer of power and authority sounds good and right—we should be led and inspired by people of ability (think: House of Commons), rather than by people who inherit their wealth, title, and position (think: House of Lords). Even though Young wrote in an ironic spirit—do we really want the students with the highest grades in school to be entrusted with decision about war, peace, trade, health, and the like—the concept of meritocracy has come to be used positively. Indeed, both Presidents Clinton and Obama spoke explicitly and continuously about the importance of a society in which merit is awarded…and awarded again.

Very important for these and other contemporary leaders is “being smart.” In these days of Google counts, we no longer have to wave our hands about such an assertion. President Obama talked explicitly about “smart” over and over again—in his own words, smart policy,  smart foreign policy, smart regulations, smart growth, smart spending cuts, smart grids, and smart technologies. Overall, he used the adjective “smart” in connection with politics and programs more than 900 times! So, too, did his meritocratically-disposed predecessor, Bill Clinton. 

In fact, even Donald Trump, in so many ways different from these Democrats, insists over and over again that he is smart, “very smart”; his cabinet has the highest possible IQ: his uncle was a professor at MIT; he brags about his family’s matriculation at the Wharton School; Joe Biden is “slow”; indeed, in the debate on September 29 of this year, he pounced on Biden’s use of the word “smart” and denigrated his opponent’s intellect and school grades.  

The exuberance about intellect transcends party lines and epochs—indeed, Sandel might claim, there is not even a counter-story. No one explicitly calls for the return of a hereditary aristocracy or even of inherited wealth and positions...though Trump does profess to love “the poorly educated.”

Sandel takes his critique very far. As his title suggests, a celebration of—or even a reluctant surrender to—meritocracy has proved to be disastrous for the contemporary world. On his account: individuals who do well in school and on standardized tests get to attend elite, selective colleges; secure well-paying jobs with concomitant “perks”;  and pass on these social benefits to their children. The statistics are overwhelming, irrefutable, chilling. And even those meritocrats who acknowledge that they may not be wholly responsible for their own success cannot help looking down on those who have not done as well in the Darwinian struggle for worldly success.  

More seriously and more destructively—on Sandel’s account—those who have not attended or failed to graduate from college, and may not even have a steady “respectable” job, feel frowned upon, ignored, or deemed to be “deplorables” mired in “fly-over country.” Ultimately, this state of affairs leads to a society at war with itself, and, quite possibly, the end to democracy and the American (or another national) dream. 

Sandel proposes two kinds of solution: 1) technological—for example,  changing radically the way that one selects among applicants for admission to elite colleges; 2) communal and even spiritual—considering all citizens as equally worthy of respect and conveying that respect in every possible way.

Sandel’s impressive (but also depressing) account stimulates two lines of thought—both connected to my own decades-long reflection on intelligence. As most readers of this blog will know, I took the lead in challenging the notion of a single intelligence, as measured by an IQ or SAT test, and in calling instead for a recognition of different kinds of intelligence, and perhaps as well, an honoring of these different kinds of minds. While notions like “social” or “emotional” intelligence have entered into public discourse, they do not emerge in Sandel’s analysis.

That’s OK by me. But to nuance Sandel’s analysis, I’d suggest that the kinds of intelligence or intelligences honored in 2020 are quite different from those that were valued in earlier epochs. As just one example: 150 years ago, admission to selective colleges required mastery of ancient languages—so-called linguistic intelligence. Nowadays, no one cares about languages (let alone classical ones), but coding and computing intelligences (logical-mathematical intelligence) is at a premium. And as machines get “smarter,” we may well be selecting for yet different kinds of intelligence—ones that are not relevant to machines—such as musical, bodily, or personal intelligences. The word “smart” may not change—but the knowledge and skills to which it refers can and does change radically. And indeed, some of our most successful entrepreneurs—see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs—never even completed college because their temperament and ambitions were misaligned to the agenda of college. Ultimately, of course, they received their share of honorary degrees. Even Donald Trump, who apparently had someone else take his SATs and refuses to reveal his college grades, clearly has “media” intelligence.

So much for smartness—where, as I say, Sandel’s argument poses no problem for me. But I have considerable unease with his overall recommendation—that meritocracy should be replaced by conferring dignity on all human beings. As I read Sandel, all human beings are worthy of dignity or respect (I prefer the latter term), independent of who they are, how they behave, how they think about the world. This may sound reasonable at first blush, but it’s not the way that I conceive the issue.

My view: As they grow—indeed, as we grow—individuals should be expected to behave with respect towards others, both those known to them and those who are strangers. And when faced with challenging issues or ideas, all human beings should attempt to deal with them as sensitively and sensibly as possible. Millionaires or even billionaires should not be treated with respect because of the money that they have inherited or amassed; rather, they need to earn that status by how they behave, and to be deprived of that status when they misbehave. By the same token, the plumber or electrician or waiter—three examples frequently used by Sandel and other philosophically oriented analysts—are entitled to as much respect and dignity as the rich person, but not just by dint of their vocation...but rather in light of how they behave toward others, normally, day in and day out.

Of course, how we behave toward others is not something that we are born with. Rather it’s what we garner from family, neighbors, friends, lessons in school and in religious settings, from what we read and view in schools, in movie houses, and nowadays, especially, online. And here is where my intuitions may differ from those of Michael Sandel. I don’t think that good, moral, respectful behavior is any more or any less likely from those who win the meritocratic laurels than from those who for whatever reason do not seek or display those laurels.  

In neither case is one’s deportment toward others a function of intelligence—however it’s defined and/or measured. As I have often argued, an intelligence can be used positively or destructively. Both Goethe and Goebbels had high linguistic intelligence in German; Goethe wrote estimable poetry, Goebbels fomented hatred. Both Mandela and Milosevic had plenty of interpersonal intelligence—Mandela brought together long hostile parts of the South African population, Milosevic fomented ethnic cleansing.

Whether smart or not smart in one or another way (whatever one’s array of intelligences), whether a winner or a loser in a particular meritocratic sweepstakes (whether a CEO or a blue collar worker) is independent of whether one is worthy of respect or dignity. One develops those assets in the course of life—it’s never too early but it may never be too late either. And a society in which individuals respect one another for how they relate to others is the one in which I would like to live.

© Howard Gardner 2020

Comment by michael sandel:

Howard, I think there is some confusion here. I do believe that all human beings are worthy of dignity or respect, independent of who they are and how they behave. This is the basic Kantian idea underlying respect for human rights. It has nothing to do with intelligence, whether of one kind or many kinds. Even a war criminal such as Milosevic, for example, is worthy of respect in this Kantian sense. Though he deserves moral condemnation and punishment for his crimes, it would be wrong to torture him. I doubt we disagree about this. (You’ll tell me if I’m wrong.)

But Kantian respect for persons as persons, or human dignity as such, is not my alternative to meritocracy. By emphasizing the dignity of work, I am proposing that we broaden our understanding of what counts as contributing to the common good beyond the value the labor market assigns to our contributions. This is why I emphasize “contributive justice,” by which I mean conferring appropriate social recognition and esteem on valuable contributions that the market may not properly recognize (such as care work, for example, or the work now being performed “essential workers” during the pandemic).

You rightly draw our attention to yet a third basis of social regard or esteem, having to do with how people behave, whether they treat others with respect, and so on. So we might distinguish three different grounds of respect:

1.  Kantian respect for human dignity, which requires that we respect everyone’s human rights, regardless of what work they do or how well they behave;

2. Respect for the dignity of work, which requires that we accord social recognition to those who make valuable contributions to the common good (typically but not only through work; unpaid community service should certainly count).

3. Respect or admiration for those who behave morally, which includes treating others with respect but also includes other praise-worthy behavior.

In the book, my primary alternative to meritocracy is #2. But this is not inconsistent with affirming #1 and #3. I certainly do not think “that good, moral, respectful behavior” is more likely “from those who win the meritocratic laurels than from those who for whatever reason do not seek or display those laurels.” So this is not a point of disagreement between us. 

My Response:

Thanks, Michael, for this very thoughtful and helpful clarification. I think we are broadly in agreement. I’m not confident that we can simply instruct or encourage individuals to honor all work equally—though it’s been a goal of social reformers for centuries. I have slightly more confidence that we can instruct or encourage individuals to distinguish between highly-paid work, on the one hand, and “good work”—work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical, on the other. But I’d be pleased to encourage both approaches.

Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash

My Skepticism about Standardized Testing: From the father of “MI”

I am often asked about assessing the multiple intelligences: Wouldn’t it be great if we could administer a battery of tests, at the end of which one could give all persons their “MI profile?”

While respecting those who have attempted to create “MI tests,” I have hesitations about this aspiration. To be sure, we have adequate tests of linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence; and there are assessments which are at least relevant for some of the other intelligences. But I have been dubious about the whole “testing route”—because all too often it involves snap judgments based on a few targeted items, rather than a full-fledged and well-rounded picture of a person’s cognitive strengths—and challenges. 

This skepticism cloaks a personal paradox. On the one hand, as a young person, I was a very good test taker—I did well on SATs, GREs, and, presumably, IQ tests. Yet at the same time, I have also been a staunch critic of standardized tests and have been actively involved in the creation of alternative forms of assessment.

One reason for the critical attitude is presented in my recently published memoir. Let me quote the relevant passage here: 

In 1956, the year of my bar mitzvah, my parents took me on a five-day trip to Hoboken, New Jersey, to have me “tested.” My parents had a bright child on their hands and, as immigrants who had not themselves received a higher education, evidently did not quite know what to do with me. I stood out with respect both to perfor­mance on schoolwork and to my prowess on the piano (no one cared about drilling!) I hasten to add that I stood out in Scranton, Pennsylvania, then a city of no more than a hundred thousand per­sons, many elderly, with perhaps a thousand youngsters in my age range. There is no way of knowing whether I would have stood out in a larger and less economically depressed area. In any event, vari­ous family friends, as well as teachers and the rabbi, had suggested to my parents that I receive informed advice from trained experts. For a few hundred dollars, one could take a full battery of psycholog­ical tests at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

I have only the dimmest memory of the testing itself. It took a number of days and involved a variety of instruments. I have made several attempts to secure the actual test results or at least a list of the kinds of tests that were administered in the middle 1950s, but to no avail. I suspect that I received a full gamut of cognitive tests and, in all probability, also measures of personality, motivation, occupa­tional skills and aspirations, and other psychological constructs of the day.

But one scene is permanently etched in my memory. On the last day, we were called into the chief clinician’s office, and there I heard sentences to this effect: “Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, Howard is a bright child. He can probably do most anything. But he has special gifts in the clerical area.” 

These words stunned me. I had been presented with literally doz­ens of instruments and had filled them out patiently and carefully. But apparently where I stood out, did especially well was in tasks that I considered, and still consider, completely mindless. In a prototypi­cal clerical test, the subject has to look at long strings of numbers or letters and cross out all that belong—or do not belong—to a specific category (say, cross out all of the t’s or every other even number). This is a task that any trained monkey or pigeon could presumably have carried out, and today of course we would allocate such tasks to simple pattern-recognizing devices. Why had my family traveled for a week, spent hundreds of dollars (the equivalent of a few thousand dollars today), to learn something that anyone could have easily seen and that—as far I could tell—had absolutely no bearing on future career or life choices that I might or should make? As far as I was concerned, Hoboken was hokum!

The other day I had a frustrating experience which resurfaced the reasons for my skepticism re standardized testing. To enter Harvard’s campus these days, one needs to go to a website, called “Crimson Clear,” and answer a set of questions. I’ve been doing this unproblematically for several weeks. But last week, I was summarily rejected. This experience was frustrating; I needed to go into my office, I had no symptoms, and I wondered what had gone wrong. It was necessary—and anxiety-provoking to wait until the next day to find out. It turns out that I had read (or more precisely skimmed) one question too quickly and had answered “yes” rather than “no.” Not to be mysterious—the question read “Have you been within six feet of anyone who has tested positively for the virus?” Of course, I would not have tried to enter campus had I been exposed to someone with COVID. But being in a hurry, I had just glanced at the question and spit out an answer that was wrong!

An advocate of tests might properly respond “Well, we want to know whether you read carefully, and you don’t.”  And certainly, if I had been taking a college entrance or some other high-stake exam, I would have been more prudent. But in general, when it comes to high-stake situations—whether it involves gaining admission to college, avoiding getting seriously ill, or infecting others—I opt for another “more authentic” means of assessment.

Interview With Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Social Impact Review

Howard Gardner was recently interviewed for the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) Social Impact Review by R. Bruce Rich, Chairman of EL Education and 2020 ALI Fellow. In the interview (click here for link) Gardner discusses among other things, his new intellectual memoir, how writing a book about the theory of multiple intelligences changed his life, the goals of education, and what it means to be good and do good work.

The interview is reproduced in full below.

Professor Howard Gardner Discusses His Memoir, A Synthesizing Mind, with 2020 Harvard ALI Fellow R. Bruce Rich

By R. Bruce Rich

Howard Gardner, the John H. and Elizabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has had a distinguished career as an innovative educator and psychologist.  His teaching and scholarship have influenced generations of researchers, education practitioners and students.  Professor Gardner recently agreed to be interviewed for the Harvard ALI Social Impact Review about his recently published memoir, A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory.

Bruce Rich:  What motivated you to write your memoir?

Howard Gardner:  As I reflected on my work in the spheres of psychology and education, and considered preparing an intellectual memoir, I became interested in how my own mind works.  It turns out that I have a synthesizing mind.  And so, in A Synthesizing Mind, I have tried to describe the workings of such a mind and to suggest some broader educational lessons.

Rich:  What are the attributes of a synthesizing mind?

Gardner:  Synthesizers decide on a topic or problem of interest - often of general interest (like intelligence or leadership or creativity, to mention three topics that I have investigated).  Synthesizers read, survey, and study broadly and deeply - they might well carry out surveys or interviews.  They (or we!) constantly put forth charts, diagrams, equations, metaphors, poems - any expression in any medium - that helps to organize the vast amounts of material.  With time, the synthesis is viable enough to test on other knowledgeable or interested persons.  And so, the process of critique and revision begins.

Synthesis is neither science nor journalism.  But ultimately, the synthesis needs to be tested publicly - and if it is accepted, it may well change how individuals think, and even how they behave.  I think that is what has happened with the “theory of multiple intelligences” (MI theory) I developed - far more than with other topics that I have explored and then written about.

What I do, as a social investigator - or, if you will, a “soft” social scientist - is tackle a large problem (or issue) and put together the best account or solution of that problem (or issue) that I can.  But to the extent that I am successful, I may change the way that people think and behave in the future, thereby invalidating some of my findings.

Rich:  You approvingly quote Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann as stating: “In the twenty-first century, the most important kind of mind will be the synthesizing mind.”  Why the importance to society of developing more such minds?

Gardner:  While henceforth much of intellectual activity can and will be done by computational devices, synthesis is a hard nut for programmers or algorithmic creators to crack.  That’s what Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann had in mind when he identified and particularly valorized synthesis.  We don’t do much in education to help people become better synthesizers - and I hope that my book is a modest contribution to that educational effort.

Rich:  You have never characterized your work as falling neatly within the confines of one or another social science discipline.  Why is that?

Gardner:  I don’t accept the sharp division between disciplines like psychology, sociology and anthropology.  I believe that they blend smoothly into one another.  Yet academic disciplines have very strong identities and tight “codes of behavior” and interdisciplinary work seldom survives, let alone triumphs, on most university campuses.  As a result, the accumulation of knowledge is slowed down and perhaps even distorted.

Rich:  You recount that from an early age, you’ve been fascinated with how we handle ethical and moral challenges - leading to a twenty-five-year focus in your work on what it means to be good.  How did you become sensitized to those considerations and why they have remained such powerful forces in your ongoing work?

Gardner:  It is up to others to judge whether I myself have lived a moral and ethical life.  I have tried though by no means have I always succeeded.

But I know for sure - and my relatives and family friends can confirm this - that my parents, who escaped Nazi Germany, had very strong moral and ethical values and grounding (as did their own parents) and I was raised with a very strong superego.  In my memoir, I also tell about the powerful example that my mother showed in protesting injustice, and I could have added dozens of stories about other family members in other circumstances - as well as some negative examples, from which I tried to learn as well.

In my early scholarly work, I was not particularly concerned with moral or ethical issues.  But then I saw how some of my own ideas - particularly those of multiple intelligences - were misused.  And so, with colleagues Mihaly (Mike) Csikszentmihalyi and William (Bill) Damon, I began to focus on “good work” - what it is, how it can be nurtured and achieved.  And that’s the major issue that my colleagues and I have pondered for the last 25 years.

Of course, over the centuries, many great scholars, thinkers, and reflective persons have been concerned with these moral and ethical issues.  But even the most brilliant among them could not have anticipated the current world - global, massively interconnected, with powerful and uncontrollable social media, and the threats of climate change and nuclear war - the list goes on!  And so, every generation needs to re-engage such crucial issues for its time - and for the nurturing of future citizens - our children and their children.

Rich:  The psychology of the arts, especially as relates to music, has formed a critical part of your research and scholarship.  What has made this so enduring? 

Gardner:  My family was not highly educated - Hitler took care of that - but my parents and grandparents - as citizens of Weimar Germany - respected the arts, and they were happy to have me play the piano, read literature, go to museums and festivals.  I was very fortunate in that regard.  In college, I took some courses in the arts and then, during my post graduate year in England (1965-1966) I devoted more time to the arts than I have been able to do during any other time in life.  I went to theater or concerts or museums almost every day!

Then occurred one of those incredible coincidences that change one’s life.  As a beginning graduate student in developmental psychology, I had the opportunity to be a founding member of an organization called Project Zero.  The purpose of the organization - founded by Nelson Goodman, a brilliant philosopher - was to carry out systematic research - philosophical but also empirical on the nature of artistic learning and achievement.  (The name “zero” reflected Goodman’s sardonic assessment of how much reliable knowledge existed on the topic!)

In my formal studies I had already noted that most developmental psychologists thought that full development meant “being a scientist” or at least “thinking like a scientist.”  I knew that was a narrow perspective, and so I elected - as a second-year doctoral student - to become a scholar on the development of artistic capacities.  And, indeed, for the first fifteen years of my scholarship, that’s what I focused on.  I very much doubt that I would ever have developed “MI theory” without that immersion in the nature and development of artistry… as well as its disintegration under conditions of damage to the brain.

Rich:  You co-directed Project Zero from 1972-2000 and you are still the head of its Steering Committee.  How has the nature of its work evolved over time? 

Gardner:  Briefly, Project Zero began its empirical work with psychological investigations of the nature and development of artistic capacities.  But over the 53+ years of our operations, we have broadened our perspective greatly.  We now focus on the full range of human capacities, working with children as young as preschoolers and adults as wizened as corporate executives on all kinds of skills and capacities.  We have written thousands of articles and many dozens of books - my over half century involvement with Project Zero is my proudest scholarly achievement.  I encourage readers to visit pz.harvard.edu, read our materials, and perhaps attend one of our courses or gatherings in person or online.

I like to say that “at Project Zero, we develop ideas and give them a push in the right direction.”  We don’t run schools or museums, but we influence their activities around the globe.

Rich:  What are some of the principal findings over the lifespan of this project?

Gardner:  This puts me on the spot.  We have had well over 100 projects, perhaps even 250(!), and even now we have dozens of ongoing projects.  But here’s what I personally am proudest of:

• The arts are not simply entertainment.  They are rigorous intellectual activities, which individuals can master, and they enrich our world as much as do the sciences, though of course in complementary ways.

• Understanding is key to learning.  And understanding is not simply parroting back what you have heard and memorized - it is the ability to explain and to make sense of material that is not familiar but where your skills and schemas of knowledge are appropriate and applicable.

• The scholarly disciplines are precious human inventions.  Interdisciplinary work is important, difficult to achieve (as I’ve alluded in discussing “Soc Rel”), yet crucial both to understanding and to solving important problems in our world.

• The professions are also precious human inventions.  Unless we preserve them and honor their precepts, we risk going back to the dark ages.  We cannot take them for granted and we have to reinvent them to some extent in every passing generation… and especially during periods of rapid change, such as the present era.

• Good work is work that is excellent in quality, personally engaging, and carried out in an ethical way.  Such work is more important than ever, and yet the challenges to ethical thought and behavior are profound and need constantly to be understood and resisted.

• Play and creativity are precious human achievements.  They cannot be taken for granted.  They need to be cultivated and preserved, as crucial to human achievement and well-being.  But creation needs to be wedded to a sense of moral responsibility - what we have termed “humane creativity.”

• Knowing how to do something is not enough - one needs to have the disposition to use that knowledge - and to do so in a way that is moral and ethical.

THE LIST COULD BE DOUBLED OR TRIPLED.  And that’s just my list.  Others at Project Zero would have their own equally valid lists.  Having the opportunity to spend time with Project Zero has been transformative for thousands of persons - educators, leaders, citizens, over the years.

Rich:  You write that publication of your book about the theory of multiple intelligences “changed your life forever.”  What, in a nutshell, is the theory of multiple intelligences? 

Gardner:  It’s the following claim:  The single word "intelligence” implies that we are either smart with everything, average with everything, or dumb with everything.  By implication, there’s just one computer that constitutes the mind-brain.  Period.

That’s just not true.  And my “synthesis” of the evidence suggests that humans are better described as having 7-10 separate mental computers - ranging from linguistic and logical (captured pretty well by standard IQ tests) to musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily, etc. - which are not well captured by standard one-shot tests.  You can’t tell from a multiple choice or short answer test whether someone has a good understanding of himself, herself, or of others.

Rich: How was this work life changing?

Gardner:  I don’t think that I changed, but my life did.  I got many invitations to speak on many platforms; I became more of a public intellectual and was expected to have opinions on many topics - including ones about which I was ignorant.  I tried to meet these expectations as best I could without interfering with my desire to carry out further research, wherever my curiosity and skills took me.  I hope that I have succeeded.

Rich: How has the work you and your colleagues have done in the area of brain science aided your understanding of multiple intelligences?

Gardner:  Neuroscience became a particular interest of mine.  For twenty years I worked at the Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center on a neurology ward, with special attention to aphasia - the disturbance of language as a result of brain damage.  I also focused on the loss or diminution of other abilities, especially those in the arts, under conditions of brain damage.  I would never have developed the theory of multiple intelligences without twin experiences: studying brain injured adults each morning, and then working with regular and sometimes gifted children in schools and in the experimental lab, in the afternoon.

Each day I observed individuals - brain-injured veterans and ordinary (and occasionally extra-ordinary children) - who were fine in one area, average in a second, while impaired to some extent in a third.  And that’s the essence of MI theory.  Knowing that someone is smart in one way simply does not predict whether they’ll be smart in other ways.

Where the synthesis came in was surveying in depth several fields of knowledge (from anthropology to genetics), developing the defining feature of an intelligence, and then evaluating many candidate capacities on whether they met, or failed to meet, the eight criteria for an intelligence.

And so, while the theory itself can be summarized in a sentence - that’s its strength and its weakness - there’s a 400-page book, Frames of Mind, with hundreds of references, in support of its claims.

Rich:  You write about your disappointment at the misuse of certain of your ideas about intelligence.  What did you experience? 

Gardner:  Contrary to the thrust of any of our own research, learning or writings in the field, certain educators began mis-portraying our findings as supporting an unfounded claim: that different racial and ethnic groups had different profiles of intelligence.  That practice (more properly, that malpractice), too, was life changing.  I went public to denounce these unfounded claims.  And I decided to devote much of the rest of my scholarly career to the study and promotion of good work - which would include constructive use of MI theory along with awareness that the theory could also be misused, misapplied.

Rich:  Which takes us to your collaboration beginning in the mid-1990s on the Good Work Project.  What is that about? 

Gardner:  In brief, the goal of the Good Work Project has been to understand the kinds of work that individuals in different professions admire and why; and then to create materials and practices that encourage the development of good work, and that help to avoid the incidence of compromised or bad work.

In the initial Good Work Project (1995-2006), my colleagues and I interviewed over 1200 individuals from a range of professions - medicine, law, journalism, theater, as well as K-12 and higher education.  That mammoth project - ten books, a dozen new projects, hundreds of articles and blogs - yielded a simple and I hope elegant formulation of good work: it is carried out excellently; it is personally engaging; and, crucially, it is carried out in an ethical way.  (See thegoodproject.org)  Now, the Good Work Project is as active as ever and has benefited over the years from interactions with members of the Harvard ALI cohort.

We show this via graphic - three intertwining Es - which in English constitutes a triple helix. 

Rich:  Can you describe your view that education, beyond providing basic literacies, should have three principal goals: inculcating truth, beauty, and goodness?

Gardner:  I think that education needs to inculcate the basic literacies, in the early years of schooling, and to prepare individuals for a life of work, in college or professional schools.

But there are 5-10 years in between the literacies and the livelihoods where I think we should master major ways of thinking - historical, artistic, philosophical mathematical, scientific - which help us to understand our world.  These disciplines are the nonintuitive tools that human beings have developed over the centuries in order to determine what is (and what is not); what we should do (and what we should not do); and what experiences are worth pursuing in greater depth and why.

Rich:  You say that your most important contribution to experimental science has been your work on nonliteral language and the brain. Can you describe that work?

Gardner:  With colleagues Ellen Winner (to whom I am happily married), Hiram Brownell, and other researchers, I demonstrated the important role that the right cerebral hemisphere plays in understanding nonliteral language.  While syntactic and phonological capacities are facilitated primarily by the left hemisphere (in right-handed persons), the understanding of metaphor, satire, humor, adages, etc., involve structures and connections located primarily in the right hemisphere.

The details nowadays are much more complicated but the participation of both hemispheres in linguistic production and understanding is now broadly accepted by the scientific community.

Rich:  You have been a prolific and highly influential author of some 30 books. Do you have a favorite? 

Gardner:  It was most fun to write Creating Minds - I had the chance to enter the minds of seven great thinkers and doers and try to understand their minds better: Einstein (logical mathematical); T.S. Eliot (linguistic); Pablo Picasso (spatial); Igor Stravinsky (musical);  Martha Graham (bodily-kinesthetic); Sigmund Freud (intrapersonal); Mahatma Gandhi (interpersonal).  I could well have chosen other persons - indeed, in other books, I entered the worlds of musician Wolfgang Mozart and of writer Virginia Woolf - but the opportunity to look at first hand data and try to imagine how these persons undertook the adventure and took the risk of breaking new  ground was truly enveloping and exciting.

Though there were of course enormous differences among these creators, I was struck by a few commonalities: they all came from relatively stable home environments; it took each a decade to develop expertise; at times of creation, they were often quite fragile and needed psychological support; and once they had worked through a major project, they would move on quite briskly to another, thereby having a series of breakthroughs over the course of a lengthy life.

In another lifetime, I’d like to study other such “great minds,” especially persons with talent who chose to use those talents for the betterment of our world.

Most people would say that Frames of Mind was my most important book.  But I think that in the future, many will look to Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter and for guidance in what to focus on in education, how to convey it, and how to determine whether that education has had its desired effect.

Rich:  What drives Howard Gardner to keep searching for new fields to conquer?

Gardner:  That’s a delicate question.  At age 77 a risky and likely proclivity is to repeat yourself - typically without knowing it.  That’s a reason I like to work on new issues with persons who are younger and not afraid to challenge me - and that includes my own children and, I hope before too long, my grandchildren as well.  And of course, I learn every day from my cherished wife, Ellen Winner, a distinguished scholar, and a wonderful mother and grandmother, whom I met at Project Zero almost fifty years ago.

About the Author:

Bruce Rich is a 2020 ALI Fellow.  He served as partner for over 35 years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a global law firm where he headed the intellectual property/media practice, which spans litigation and counseling in areas of copyright, trademark, First Amendment, and antitrust law.  Bruce is also the chairman of EL Education, a nonprofit working to improve the quality of K-12 public school education in under-served communities.