"Truth, Beauty, Goodness -- what do they mean to young and old in a
21st century world experiencing dramatic technological and philosophical
change? A man who understands the difficulty in educating for the
virtues in a challenging new age is perhaps better known around the
world for his theory of multiple intelligences than for his decades of
study of a topic which is arguably the most pertinent of our times.
I wondered how the theories and views expressed in Dr. Howard Gardner's book, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter,
might apply to some of the egregious moral break-downs such as the
sexual abuse, invasion of privacy, standardized test cheating and
plagiarism scandals which have haunted some of our most respected
institutions recently. He agreed to discuss this with me.
Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of
Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in
1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and
universities. In 2005 and 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and
Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public
intellectuals in the world.
What inspired you to write Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter?
I began as a psychologist. When educators showed interest in my
work, I began to reflect on my own educational vision. 15 years ago, I
began working on a book called The Disciplined Mind. In that
book I argued that the purpose of education, beyond the acquisition of
literacies, is to give us the tools to determine what's true and what's
not, what's beautiful and what's not, and what's good and what's not.
To make it concrete, I used three examples. For truth, I used the
theory of evolution. For beauty, I used the music of Mozart. For
goodness and badness, I used the Holocaust. I was interested in how we
could make use of our multiple intelligences to convey these very rich
topics.
Critiques came from two different directions. On the one hand, there
were philosophical and epistemological critiques from postmodernism,
which basically said; "Who are YOU to say what's true? Beauty is an old
fashioned idea. Goodness is relative." So I got a pretty severe
postmodern critique. The second critique came from the emerging
technologies. At the time the book was written, no one had thought about
the web, social networks, Twitter and virtual realities. And yet each
of these inventions challenges traditional notions of truth, beauty,
goodness. I realized I had to go back to the drawing boards. If Truth,
Beauty and Goodness are to be the backbone of education, I had to be
able to respond to the philosophical critiques on the one hand and to
the technological revolution on the other. So that is what inspired me
to write the book.
What is the principal message of Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed?
The right question: How do we preserve some sense of Truth, Beauty and Goodness at a time we have so much change going on?
1. With respect to truth, we need to understand the METHOD by which
people make their assertions. What is the basis, what is the evidence,
for truth claims?
2. With respect to beauty, the canon is gone. The good news is that
we have access to all the works of art ever created and we can each
form our own portfolio (physical, virtual or just in your head) of
beauty. These will be things that we find interesting and memorable,
things we wish to revisit. Our portfolio of beautiful things can be
very diverse and it will also change over time.
3. With respect to goodness: When it comes to how you treat your
neighbor, the answer is contained in the Ten Commandments. But when it
comes to how you deal with people in a complex, division of labor, hyper
connected world, we have to reinvent our relations to other people. In
our study of good play (see goodworkproject.org) we ask how, in the 21st
century, we reinvent things like privacy, intellectual property,
identity, trust-worthiness, and what it means to belong to a community.
Competition to succeed has become more intense than ever.
How do we balance competition in our lives? How might the views in your
book apply to some of the standardized test cheating scandals that
continue to make headlines?
In Truth, Beauty and Goodness, I recommend the creation of
what I call "commons." Within schools (both physical and virtual) we
need places where people can talk honestly about the problems that arise
in our contemporary world with respect to the mission of that
institution -- for example a school, or a newspaper.
Consider, for example, how to use a commons when there is an epidemic
of cheating. We bring together parents, students and teachers, and
it's often a revelation. For example, the parent might say, "You know
you should not cheat. I told you cheating was wrong." The child might
reply, "Yes, but when I came home with a B you said I don't want any
more B's." The child says to the teacher, "Sam and I told you that
Johnny cheated but you did nothing about it." Or, "You wrote the same
thing on all of our papers rather than reading each paper carefully."
And so you need to have very open conversations, skillfully moderated,
leading to viable policies that are enforced.
An example discussed in the book. Some years ago the Dean of
Admissions at a major university had been fired because she had lied
about her credentials. In the group of 20 students I was working with,
nobody endorsed the firing of the Dean. Either the students said,
"Well, if she was doing a good job, why fire her?" Or they said,
"Everybody lies on their resume."
To answer your question, here are the simple choices. Either you say
this is the way things are and there is nothing more we can do OR you
say this is the new world and we can do better. We need vivid examples
of good work, and vivid examples of the consequences of bad work -- both
for the bad worker and for the larger society. When the head of a
large bank in England recently got in trouble because of tinkering with
the interest rates, he was forced to resign. If teachers or presidents
of universities submit the work of others as their own, they should be
fired.
You have said that "the odds of ascertaining the truth about
something are better than ever..." Would this apply to the Murdoch
hacking scandal?
There is a huge amount of information on the internet and there are
many claims. If somebody makes a claim, you have to ask what kind of
evidence do they have? If they have evidence, they are credible. If
they do not, you should ignore it. Twenty or thirty years ago, there
were only a few recognized media. There were also things that
journalists knew but that they did not publish. That has all changed.
The delicious paradox of the Murdoch case is that he was using
technology tools to get information but now those technology tools are
been used on him.
How do the views expressed in your book apply to some of the
egregious moral break-downs within our most respected institutions such
as the child abuse scandal at Penn State and the alleged abuse at the
Horace Mann School in Riverdale?
My distinction between neighborhood morality and the ethics of roles
is helpful here. Abusing children is always wrong. These are immoral
acts that need to be identified and punished the way any violations of
the Ten Commandments are. Anybody who would defend pedophilia would be
foolish.
The ethics of roles comes in when the question is raised about
organizations that do credentialing of other professional organizations.
On what basis can they remove either the individuals who work at those
institutions (like a coach or a president) or the institution itself
(removing its degree granting powers)? How do you deal with a large
institution in cases where a Dean lies about her credentials or the
higher-ups ignore the reports of child abuse? In my terms, those are
ethical issues not moral issues. It is easier to deal with a situation
if you already have an operating ethical code like the Hippocratic oath.
When we create a culture that is highly competitive, i.e.
success is based on results - are we setting ourselves up for some of
the issues we've discussed today?
Absolutely. When the word goes out that you are going to be judged
by how much money you bring in, and in addition, someone is indicating
"I'm not interested in how you are going to do it, just go for it!",
there is a problem. If you see your life as a series of steps from an
elite private school to an Ivy League School to Goldman Sachs or its
equivalent, and you are going to keep blinders on from anything that
might keep you from getting there, you are likely to end up in big
trouble. One of the things I say in my book is this: If you want to be
a journalist, the decision whether to work for NPR or for Fox is an
incredibly important decision.
In the case of issues that institutions like News Corp, or Penn State
or Horace Mann are facing today, I think the first question one needs
to ask is: Is this damage control or does this require serious purging,
rethinking, reinvention? If it's damage control, how we get better
press releases, and what we do to correct the immediate problem, then I
can predict the next crisis is at hand.
If we decide there is something seriously wrong with a community that
could do this kind of thing, and that we need to reflect, rethink and
perhaps rework what we do and how we do it, then there is some hope for
serious change. And here is where the "commons" comes in. There need to
be norms and rules that emerge from the discussions of the principal
stakeholders in an organization. In a school, that may include the
college admissions officer, the teachers, the parents and the students
in the same room. Policies must have "buy in" from all these groups.
One of the reasons some institutions don't prosecute kids for cheating
is that the parents threaten to sue. The consequences have to be
publically known and the stakeholders, including parents, have to
support them.
When somebody violates a core principle, that person needs to be
punished and that punishment needs to be known. As far as I know, in 375
years, Harvard has never fired a tenured professor for plagiarism. But
today you can't keep things secret anymore and that is what's good.
How should we assess truth and goodness?
Someone in India took my work very literally and came up with a ten
point scale for goodness. I responded. Rather than quantifying, why
don't we just have an arrow instead? If something looks healthy and
ethical, we'll let the arrow point up. If it looks like it's getting
worse, we'll let the arrow point down. To me, that's a far better way
to think about the moral fiber of a place, and not 1 to 10. I'd be
happy if Goldman Sachs, Horace Mann, Penn State, or Harvard would
install a commons with an arrow that could be reoriented in the center."
More information on Howard Gardner's good work: The GoodWork Project
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