Pedagogy

Acquiring an in-depth knowledge is the key to development. Howard Gardner (1999), the noted psychologist and an avid explorer of human mind from the perspective of cognitive science and neuroscience, has come up with The Disciplined Mind, which is an elaborated version of a section of his concept of multiple intelligence (MI) that specifically deals about the ways and means of learning with right attitude.

Earlier in his book Multiple Intelligences The Theory in Practice (1993), he unveiled a new horizon of human development by dividing human mind into five faculties and suggesting a systematic development of each of them to attain a superior combination of body, mind and spirit that would not only effectively handle all requirements of life, but also would help humans to manifest their potential on the chosen area.
Gardner named these five faculties of minds as below
The Disciplined Mind
The Synthesizing Mind
The Creating Mind
The Respectful Mind
The Ethical Mind

Out of the above, The Disciplined Mind (henceforth will be called as TDM) is imagined as a driver of enhancing thinking ability to the level of an expert and mastering any areas of learning such as science, history, arts, and mathematics. The role of TDM under the framework of Gardner looks like below  

The role of the disciplined mind in Gardners Five Minds for Future

Gardner suggest achieving disciplined mind by mastering at least a pattern of thinking and grasping in-depth knowledge about a subject which would encourage the person to develop further insight on the subject, instead of parroting the facts on it. Deeply thinking what one is doing could serve the purpose, suggests Gardner, towards developing the understanding of the difference between subject matter and discipline. He clearly hints at the internalization of the subject through learning and practicing and perhaps to avoid the pitfalls like aping others or learning without a sense of purpose, he prescribed investing at least a decade on mastering a particular subject. This is what the disciplinary understanding of truth, beauty and goodness is all about, according to Gardner.

Gardners penchant for structuring mechanism of mind and to exploit it for systematic development of humans becomes apparent when he says, I favor depth over breadth, construction over accumulation, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake over the obeisance to utility, an individualized over a uniform education, and an education that is public in character.

The greatest contribution of Gardners MI theory is that it enables the teachers to underpin the intelligences that isare more activated in a child and to take appropriate measures to ensure unhindered development of that child. Thus he proceeds on to elaborate how students could acquire the art of meaningfully pursuing the education that would create sustained impact on their application of knowledge. In a way, TDM successfully highlights the significance of approaching education with a mindset of attaining truth, beauty and the good in the end, because these happen to be the essence of all human endeavors, if the plethora of evidences provided by innumerable researchers has anything to go by.

This book is also an improvised version of his earlier concept of multiple intelligences, as it includes nine areas of brain capacity instead of earlier seven. Gardner associates nine areas of intelligence with children development, such as
VisualSpatial This refers to the children who learn best visually and organize things spatially. Thus they would like see every process to garner better understanding, and accordingly they would be more comfortable with charts, graphs, maps, tables, illustrations, art, puzzles, or anything that would catch their imagination.
VerbalLinguistic This refers to children who show strength in the linguistic abilities like speaking, writing, reading, or listening. Thus these children would be more successful in conventional classroom teaching that mostly involves the above elements.

MathematicalLogical This refers to children who show their strength in calculations, reasoning and problem solving. Thus they too appear to well in traditional classroom teaching as the same is logically sequenced and marshaled in a systematic manner.

BodilyKinesthetic This involves children who love to learn more through physical activities like games, movement, practical tasks, etc., who show a fidgeting tendency in the classroom when there is only lecture and no activity
MusicalRhythmic This includes children who tend to organize their learning through elements of music, such as songs, patterns, rhythms, instruments and musical expression. Thus this group of children stands to gain less from the conventional classroom teaching.
Intrapersonal This refers to the internal communication of humans and includes children who are sensitive about their own feelings, beliefs, and ideas. Thus this group of children would show the trait of being silent but keen observer of the proceedings around and would try to decipher their meanings in their own way.
Interpersonal This is about open communication with the people around and it includes children who love to interact with people for knowing and learning. Thus this tendency of theirs could be reflected in their excessive talking or mixing with people.

Naturalist This intelligence involves nature and children who show more inclination with nature and love extensive outdoor activities appear to use this intelligence more than the rest. Thus traditional classroom teaching has less to offer them.

Existentialist The higher influence of this intelligence among children can be found in those who want to learn under the bigger framework of human existence with the aim to underpin their own standing in it. Accordingly they are driven by the questions like Why are we here or What is our role in the world They carry the potential to be philosophers.

Therefore, from a clinical perspective too, this book provides ample scope to test Gardners concept of MI on at least eight areas of learning, such as
Reading Skills
Math Skills
Writing Skills
Spelling Skills
Speed Reading
Study Skills
Self- awareness Skills
Planning and goal setting Abilities

The beauty of the concept lies in the fact that it recognizes each of the above intelligences as one avenue of developing greater understanding of a subject. However, some might consider his teaching strategies are leaned more on abstract elements, but such argument would only be valid when one would provide tangible evidence of getting better results by ignoring the intangible factors of human development, such as, ethics, morality, love, faith, trust, understanding and so on.

On the other hand, many noted researchers work (Deci, 1975 Rosenthal, 1986 Dennet, 1990, 1991) on the efficacy of such elements clearly consolidate the concept of multiple intelligence of Gardner, where they provide evidences on the efficacy of intrinsic motivation in creating long-term impact on human development. Gardner saw this issue from another plane in TDM, as he correlated the process of pursuing in-depth knowledge and understanding with intrinsic motivation.

Otherwise Gardner would not have said that each child is already perfect at the level of its potential and it is the task of the adults to help children manifest that potential. This vision of Gardner matches with another visionary, Swami Vivekananda of the past, who said Education is the manifestation of perfection, which is already in man (Swami, 2009).

Modern research on human brain too provides evidence that human brains are conditioned to apply various ways to processes all information, besides recording its responses in the areas that it considers appropriate to maintain and use. This natural selection varies from person to person and thus such differences in the choice of learning takes place. Such state of affairs amply support the notion that identifying such areas in humans and to encourage each brains tendency of recording all experiences could be a way to systematically develop each human by enabling them to store more information for use.

Some might argue that Gardner would have done better, had he emphasized on the issue of brain coherence in learning, as the modern research also speaks about the ability of the brain also assembles various information from many parts of it as and when required.

However, such argument does not offer much, since Gardner never overtly explained such intelligences as something compartmentalized elements, and instead advocated a process of learning that would apply all forces of human mind. Thus in a way the book fairly indicate that the conventional classroom teaching can easily adopt many techniques that would facilitate the children to utilize more types of intelligence.
The rising popularity of play-based or music-oriented teaching curriculum already proves that Gardners concept carries huge potential in the sphere of child development. For example Gardner too advocates utilizing strong emotional component in learning, and music appears to provide that, as well as a natural scene like a mother animal feeding her baby.

The book also serves as an eye-opener to the reasons why some children fail to do well under traditional classroom teaching environment, by showing that it is the failure of the learning system that ignores the multidimensional process of learning. For example, the book shows how conventional classroom teaching can seriously hamper by ignoring a childs ability to learn through bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, which required some music and a little space to dance instead of notebook and dictation. Alongside, it also highlights the need of enhancing the abilities of the teachers to identify the dominance of one or the other intelligence in children and to guide them in an appropriate manner.

TDM also generates the possibility of combining the usage of all nine intelligences at elementary stage of learning to identify each childs choice of learning avenues, and then they may be grouped separately in the higher level of learning where the system would encourage exploring the world of truth, beauty and goodness on their own chosen track. At least TDM makes this proposition as plausible at the moment, which makes it mark in the sphere of learning.

The book in fact reflects a wonderful confluence of several other views, where Gardner weaves them to drive his point home, that cognition involves all possible mental processes and can be termed as the experience of knowing, which differs from the experience of feeling or willing. In the process of explaining the above Gardner exploits the Darwinism, Mozart-magic, or even holocaust, which might provide some jerk to the conventional propagators of education.

From this perspective the book could also be earmarked as a reincarnation of Platos classical works in a neoclassical format, where Gardner (1991) intends to structure the human capacities to know truth, to love beauty and to will goodness. From another point of view, TDM advocates almost a Socratic style of teaching where there was no book to cram and parrot later to collect some digits as the proof of ones ability, merit and assurance for future benefits. Instead, the system would invoke questions in the minds of the learner and challenge them to probe and find the answer.

Therefore, it can be said that the inherent qualities of humans and the efficacy of self-sufficient exploration to know the truth, beauty and goodness, have fuelled Gardners own exploration on finding the best way of learning. Consequently, TDM stands to be a book that frames all what the thinkers of yesteryears deeply felt and envisioned, and suggests exploiting them in a cohesive and cogent manner.