The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner

"The tenets of multiple intelligences (MI) theory are not a necessary part of the analysis undertaken here, but some acknowledgment that people do learn, represent, and utilize knowledge in many different ways is important to my argument. Such well-documented differences among individuals complicate an examination of human learning and understanding. To begin with, these differences challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as well.

I argue that a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective. Students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. The broad spectrum of students--and perhaps the society as a whole--would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a number of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means. pages 12 & 13.

"Complicating this picture yet further, I have questioned the assumption that all children learn in the same way. Studies of cognition suggest that there exist many different ways of acquiring and representing knowledge; these individual differences need to be taken into account in our pedagogy as well as in our assessments." page 14.

"My own view is that a well-trained and effective teacher is still preferable to the most advanced technology, and that even excellent hardware and software are to little avail in the absence of appropriate curricula, pedagogy, and assessment." page 223.

Howard Gardner. Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Researcher at the Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center, was a MacArthur Fellow and recently won the Grawmeyer Award in Education for his theory on multiple intelligences.