Description
"To Open Minds is a joy to read and truly a mind-opener: to our views about children, their education, and the development of creativity and to the workings of Howard Gardner's keen and compassionate mind."
-ALBERT SHANKER, President, American Federation of Teachers
In the current debate over the future of education, experts heatedly espouse one of two approaches: traditional or progressive, rote learning or spontaneity, discipline or freedom. In this thoughtful and engaging book, the noted cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner explores both approaches: the progressive, as exemplified in his own education and research; and the traditional, as practiced for centuries in China.
Long committed to progressivism, Gardner was, on his first visit to China, appalled by its emphasis on the structured learning of skills. On subsequent visits, he came to see that China's ancient civilization has much to teach us-lessons embodied, for instance, in the apprenticeship approach to calligraphy.
In this unique attempt to address the dilemma in education, Gardner weaves the lessons garnered from three vantage points -his own traditional education as an American child, his years of research on creativity at Harvard, and what he saw in modern Chinese classrooms-into a program for the opening of minds which draws on the best of both modes, traditional and progressive.
ISBN:9780465086306
