Quotes About Howard Gardner

#1. Research by Harvard's Howard Gardner, Stanford's William Damon, and Claremont's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi zeroed in on what they call "good work," a potent mix of what people are excellent at, what engages them, and their ethics - what they believe matters.18

Daniel Goleman

#2. We have so much to cover and so little time to cover it. Howard Gardner refers to curriculum coverage as the single greatest enemy of understanding. Think instead about ideas to be discovered.

Alfie Kohn

#3. Emile Zola was a poor student at his school at Aix. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we recognize this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing appropriately with many problems that we face in the world.

Howard Gardner

#4. One must exploit the asynchronies that have befallen one, link them to a promising issue or domain, reframe frustrations as opportunities, and, above all, persevere.

Howard Gardner

#5. If we were to abandon concern for what is true, what is false, and what remains indeterminate, the world would be totally chaotic. Even those who deny the importance of truth, on the one hand, are quick to jump on anyone who is caught lying.

Howard Gardner

#6. Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.

Howard Gardner

#7. We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older ... then it is very hard to change our minds

Howard Gardner

#8. Most people (by the time they have become adults ) can't change their minds because their neural pathways have become set ... the longer neural pathways have been running one way the harder it is to rewire them.

Howard Gardner

#9. It's not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart.

Howard Gardner

#10. Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one's own culture.

Howard Gardner

#11. I need to add that my work on multiple intelligences received a huge boost in 1995 when Daniel Goleman published his book on emotional intelligence. I am often confused with Dan. Initially, though Dan and I are longtime friends, this confusion irritated me.

Howard Gardner

#12. The countries who do the best in international comparisons, whether it's Finland or Japan, Denmark or Singapore, do well because they have professional teachers who are respected, and they also have family and community which support learning.

Howard Gardner

#13. I am knowledgeable enough about the world of prizes to realize that there is a large degree of luck - both for the recognitions that you receive and those that you did not.

Howard Gardner

#14. We've got to do fewer things in school. The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage ... You've got to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something so they can think about it in lots of different ways and apply it.

Howard Gardner

#15. Young children possess the ability to cut across the customary categories; to appreciate usually undiscerned links among realms, to respond effectively in a parallel manner to events which are usually categorized differently, and to capture these ori

Howard Gardner

#16. I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

Howard Gardner

#17. The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way.

Howard Gardner

#18. To ask "Where in your brain is intelligence?" is like asking "Where is the voice in the radio?"

Howard Gardner

#19. Part of the maturity of the sciences is an appreciation of which questions are best left to other disciplinary approaches.

Howard Gardner

#20. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do ... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves.

Howard Gardner

#21. Being creative means first of all doing something unusual ... On the other hand, however unusual it may be, the idea also has to be reasonable for people to take it seriously.

Howard Gardner

#22. I believe that the brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc.

Howard Gardner

#23. Creativity begins with an affinity for something. It's like falling in love.

Howard Gardner

#24. You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.

Howard Gardner

#25. Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader's arsenal

Howard Gardner

#26. A lot of knowledge in any kind of an organization is what we call task knowledge. These are things that people who have been there a long time understand are important, but they may not know how to talk about them. It's often called the culture of the organization.

Howard Gardner

#27. If you are not prepared to resign or be fired for what you believe in, then you are not a worker, let alone a professional. You are a slave.

Howard Gardner

#28. Now, you listen, Alyssa Victoria Gardner. Normal is subjective. Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not normal. Because you are to me. And my opinion is all that matters. Got it?

A.G. Howard

#29. By nature, I am not an optimist, though I try to act as if I am.

Howard Gardner

#30. If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.

Howard Gardner

#31. No academic ever expects to be taken seriously by more than three other people, because really, we write for three people in our field.

Howard Gardner

#32. My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.

Howard Gardner

#33. The ability to solve problems or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural settings.

Howard Gardner

#34. Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.

Howard Gardner

#35. Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.

Howard Gardner

#36. Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system.

Howard Gardner

#37. While I've worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.

Howard Gardner

#38. New media technologies can open up new opportunities for self-expression. But yoking one's identity too closely to certain characteristics of these technologies - and lacking the time, opportunity, or inclination to explore life and lives offline - may result in an impoverished sense of self.

Gardner Howard

#39. Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.

Howard Gardner

#40. It is important for leaders to know their stories; to get them straight; to communicate them effectively, particularly to those who are in the thrall of rival stories; and, above all, to embody in their lives the stories that they tell.

Howard E. Gardner

#41. I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place

Howard Gardner

#42. An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation.

Howard Gardner

#43. Kids go to school and college and get through, but they don't seem to really care about using their minds. School doesn't have the kind of long term positive impact that it should.

Howard Gardner

#44. The Goal of Education is to Help People Use Their Minds Better

Howard Gardner

#45. Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about something ... Many of us are fundamentalists ... because it worked pretty well for us.

Howard Gardner

#46. The biggest communities in which young people now reside are online communities.

Howard Gardner

#47. What we want ... is for students to get more interested in things, more involved in them, more engaged in wanting to know; to have projects that they can get excited about and work on over long periods of time, to be stimulated to find things out on their own.

Howard Gardner

#48. Education is at a turning point

Howard Gardner

#49. Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.

Howard Gardner

#50. Twenty-five years ago, the notion was you could create a general problem-solver software that could solve problems in many different domains. That just turned out to be totally wrong.

Howard Gardner

#51. Hitler didn't travel. Stalin didn't travel. Saddam Hussein never traveled. They didn't want to have their orthodoxy challenged.

Howard Gardner

#52. It may well be easier to remember a list if one sings it (or dances to it). However, these uses of the 'materials' of an intelligence are essentially trivial. What is not trivial is the capacity to think musically.

Howard Gardner

#53. I'd rather see the United States as a beacon of good work and good citizenship, rather than as #1 on some international educational measurement.

Howard Gardner

#54. We need to focus on the kind of human beings we want to have and the kind of society in which we want to live

Howard Gardner

#55. Kids make their mark in life by doing what they can do, not what they can't ... School is important, but life is more important. Being happy is using your skills productively, no matter what they are.

Howard Gardner