Fronteiras do Pensamento - Howard Gardner [parte I]

[Music] the traditional view of intelligence goes back about 100 years and it consists of a number of points first of all intelligence is a single thing psychologists use the English letter G to describe general intelligence intelligence is highly heritable that means it carried in the human genes so if you know how smart your parents are or even better if you know how smart your grandparents are you can predict how smart you will be since it's part of the human genome you can't do much about it you are stuck with your general intelligence now these are

all view that I disagree with I don't think this view is correct but you can understand a new view better if you contrast it with the former view now what's interesting is this traditional view of intelligence is a Western View Europe and the Americas if you go to East Asia China Japan Korea you get a very different view a Confucian view which says that how smart you are Depends primarily on your effort how hard you work about 30 years ago I began to develop an entirely different way of thinking about intelligence not based on paper

and pencil test not based upon looking at brain waves but rather an interdisciplinary multidisciplinary approach which focused on how abilities have evolved over thousands and even millions of years how the brain has evolved and how it's organized today in human beings what are the different abilities which were valued in preliterate times in small Clans in East Africa and in the South Seas and at the Arctic pole what do we know from special populations prodigies savant idios Savant people with Autism all of whom have very Jagged profiles they're good in some things average in some things

below average in some things there's no way that the traditional view of intelligence can explain this kind of scatter I put all of these all of these disciplinary findings together I established a set of eight criteria drawn from anthropology history psychology genetics neurology and I came up with a multiple theory of intelligence for me an intelligence is a potential to process information that comes in through your eyes or your ears or your hands so that you can solve problems or make things which are valued in at least one culture or Community that's the definition but

I think an analogy or metaphor works better the traditional view of intelligence suggests we have a single Mainframe computer inside our skull and if that computer works well you're smart in everything if it works average you're average in everything if it works slowly you're kind of dumb in everything I believe we have a number of we have several computers in our mind brain language computers music computers personal computers and so on and there are probably a few few people where all the computers work well a few people where none of the computers works well but

most of us are an amalgam a combination of some computers that are quite good good some computers that are average and some computers which don't work very well that in essence is multiple intelligence theory the first intelligence linguistic intelligence is the intelligence of the writer the orator the poet the journalist people who use language as their major activity the second intelligence is logical mathematical intelligence that's the intelligence of the mathematician or the scientist most intelligence tests only look at those two intelligences and they're important for school especially a western secular school as we had in

Europe and then in the Americas in the 20th century whether it's appropriate for a digital school of the 21st century nobody knows if you're good in language and logic you will succeed at most western schools and as long as you stay in school you'll think you're smart but if you should ever navigate the streets of sa Paulo in an automobile or you should ever try to survive in the Amazon you will discover that there are other kinds of intelligence which are at least as important musical intelligence the intelligence of performers singers composers conductors I understand

now in Brazil there is a movement to get more young children able to to play violin and other instruments that's musical intelligence a fourth intelligence is spatial intelligence the intelligence that allows us to navigate wide space like a sailor or airplane pilot or more local kinds of space like a sculptor or chess player my example of spatial intelligence is an architect and I was delighted to learn that one of the world's most famous Architects Oscar Neer is still alive over a hundred years of age and still working in uh in Brazil that gives us a

lot of Hope um a fifth kind of intelligence is bodily intelligence the intelligence of the athlete the dancer someone like Pelle undoubtedly has a lot of bodily kinesthetic intelligence it's also the intelligence of a crafts person or a surgeon people who use their whole bodies or parts of their bodies like their hands or their mouth to solve problems or to make things interpersonal intelligence is the intelligence of understanding other people obviously it's important for leaders teachers clinicians sales people people who are in religion who have a congregation all of those involve interpersonal intelligence some people

call it social intelligence a very interesting intelligence is intra personal intelligence understanding of yourself having a good model of who you are what your strengths are what your trying to achieve what happens when something goes wrong it's a very important intelligence we don't know anything about how to teach it an eighth intelligence which I did not write about until 10 years ago is the naturalist intelligence it's the intelligence that allowed us to recognize the differences between plants between animals between rock formations between clouds the world of nature none of us would be here if our

ancestors had not known what to eat and what not to eat what animals to pursue which animals to run away from but now most of us don't have to work in the world of nature we just go to the grocery store but the parts of our brain which evolved to discriminate in the world of nature we now use for consumption which automobile to buy which sneakers to buy we use that part of the mind brain to navigate the world of consumption there might be a ninth intelligence which I call the existential intelligence it's the intelligence

of big questions what's going to happen to us does God love me what is love what is God I think this is a useful concept but I'm not certain because I would like to know whether there are parts of the brain which evolved to deal deal with questions which are too big or too little to perceive these questions of existence so now I say we we have probably eight and a half intelligences after over 25 years I can reduce the claims of multiple intelligence theory to a very small number two scientific claims and two educational

claims the first scientist claim is every human being has all of these intelligences it's a definition of homo sapiens cognitively speaking but the second scientific claim is that no two people have exactly the same profile and that second scientific claim leads to two educational claims both of which go against the practice of many many years the first one says we should individualize education as much as possible and that means teach each person in the way that they learn the best and assess them test them in ways where they can show what they have understood throughout

educational history we have done the opposite we taught in only one way we tested in only one way and if you didn't do well you were stupid this is the first time in human history that we can individualize education more broadly through computers because computers can present lessons in many ways computers are very patient they don't get frustrated and if one way doesn't work they can use another way so individualization is becoming a reality in our time the second educational claim is we should teach everything that's important in lot of different ways again this is

a very revolutionary idea we should teach things through language through logic through works of art through debate through humor we should teach things in many different ways and if you do two wonderful things happen first you reach more students cuz some learn better from stories some learn better from mathematical equations some learn better from works of art some learn better from Hands-On where they construct things themselves second of all if you teach in multiple ways you show what it's like to really understand something because anything that you understand well yourself your family your neighborhood your

job your hobby you can think about in many ways you can joke about it you can make caricatures you can dramatize it uh you can convert it into a dialogue you can make a chart and so the pluralization of Education not only reaches more people but in terms of the brain it activates more neural networks and the more neural networks that are activated the more your understanding is so from this Theory which is a psychological theory a theory of how the mind is organized some educational claims have emerged over the last 25 years I want

now to talk about um the kinds of Minds that we need in the future future so globalization imagine with me mega cities like sa Paulo or Mexico City where millions and millions of people have to live together work find ways of dealing with one another even if they are of very different backgrounds think about Brands which travel around the world f fast food chains movies automobiles clothing so these are all examples of globalization the movement of money customs and populations the second feature is the biological Revolution every month we're learning more about the brain every

month we're learning more about genetics and that information is going to affect education in very powerful ways in your lifetime students will come to school with a picture of their brain a functional MRI and a gene chip with their own unique genome and they will say to teachers teach me in a way that I can learn and if the teachers cannot make sense of the brain image or the gene ship then education will become a medical specialty because of course doctors and scientists are trained to read about the brain and to read about genetics and

already and this is something I study we can tell very early in life if a child is going to have reading problems If the child is at risk for dyslexia and we're beginning to know what kind of treatment will work for what kind of language problem and the same thing will happen with each of the intelligences so the biological Revolution will have enormous impact in education though only in the most specialized settings is it evident at the present time the third Revolution is the digital Revolution computers the worldwide web the internet all of these things

are already beginning to have impact in education and it's a situation very unusual where young people are much more sophisticated than older people um we distinguish between digital immigrants which are most most of you and your children who are digital Natives and I'm a digital paleolith but I'm trying to study and understand the new digital media because those are also huge changes that are occurring in our society one other one I will mag mention is lifelong learning in my grandparents generation most people didn't have even a secondary school education in my parents generation most people

didn't have to learn once they finished secondary school or the university now of course education everywhere has to be LIF lifelong and so not only do we need to know how we can continue to learn but thank goodness we now know the the brain the brain is able to acquire new information for many many years after adolescence so now I'm going to introduce five Minds for the future which is a a book that was recently published in English and also in Portuguese and Spanish but in fact this is not a book about psychology it's not

a book about the brain it's a book about policy what are the kinds of Minds that we need to develop in the 21st century so the first mind next slide is the disciplined mind the disciplined mind and the disciplined mind has three different connotations first of all discipline means working steadily at things and getting better the second sense of discipline is to master the major ways of thinking that human beings have developed in the last few thousand years thinking mathematically artistically scientifically historically by the time young people finished Secondary School the traditional view of intelligence

goes back about a 100 years and it consists of a number of points first of all intelligence is a single thing psychologists use the English letter G to describe general intelligence intelligence is highly heritable that means it's carried in the human genes so if you know how smart your parents are or even better if you know how smart your grandparents are you can predict how smart you will be since it's part of the human genome you can't do much about it you are stuck with your general intelligence everybody needs to be an expert in at

least one thing an expert artist or crafts person or professional because if you're not a professional expert either you will not have a job or you will work for somebody else who's an expert because anything that can be automated will be automated many jobs which existed even 25 years ago are done as well or better by computers than they are by human beings so it's extremely important for everyone to be disciplined enough to master a discipline if he or she wants to succeed in the 21st century the second mind proo is the synthesiz izing mind

and I think this is the most interesting mind it's the one that I've thought the most about today everybody is inundated overwhelmed by information anything that you look up on the internet you could spend the rest of your life reading about that topic and going to all the links so the synthesizing mind has many jobs it has to decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore and it needs criteria for making that separation the synthesizing mind has to put together material so you can hold on to it if you can't organize it in

a way that makes sense to you you will forget it and if you are in the business of communicating as a teacher or as a worker you need to be able to convey your synthesis to other people now in a way Educators have always had to synthesize but we haven't really been mindful reflective about how we do it but in the 21st century we need to understand our synthesizing well enough so that we can help students become better synthesizers and that means you need to have criteria for judging syntheses because not every synthesis is good

just like every textbook is not good so you need to have the criteria to judge is a synthesis balanced is it too broad is it too narrow is it eccentric in some way and I thought that my field of psychology would have answers to this question but it doesn't so the challenge of understanding how we synthesize and being able to do it well I think will characterize the 21st century the Third Kind of mind is the creating mind this is the mind that goes beyond discipline Beyond synthesis and explores the unknown asks new questions comes

up with new puzzles proposes new Solutions in English we talk about thinking outside the box the creating mind thinks outside the box but you cannot think outside the box unless you have a box and the box is the discipline and the synthesizing because if you don't have a box you might come up with something new but probably you will just rein vent the wheel the trick the secret is to learn the discipline and the synthesizing when you're young because then there's more time to think outside the box as you get older the Box gets more

and more uh congealed sclerotic it's more difficult to change and so creativity is easier when you've mastered the discipline but the discipline hasn't become a Blinder that hides outside the box [Music] [Music]