A Synthesizing Mind by Howard Gardner

Author:Howard Gardner [Gardner, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: synthesis; multiple intelligence; MI;
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Let me step back for a moment.

As I mentioned at the start, this memoir differs from most instances of that genre. It’s not really a personal memoir, nor is it a complete autobiography. It focuses on my ideas—especially the theory of multiple intelligences—and on an analysis of my own mind, which, I contend, is a synthesizing mind. Until this point, as I proceeded from my childhood to the emergence of MI theory, I have proceeded largely in chronological order, from Scranton to Wyoming Seminary to Harvard, from history to Soc Rel to developmental psychology and neuropsychology, from young scribbler to a writer in various genres.

In the remainder of the book, I continue to describe ideas and events and, as appropriate, give the dates of the occurrence. But as my focus shifts, from the development of MI theory to the reception of it in the academic and public worlds, and from the development of a synthesizing mind to an analysis of its workings and products, I will deal with themes from the last half of my life with the narrative proceeding thematically rather than chronologically.

And though the book makes no effort to be personal—it’s not about my love life or my political views—it’s important to mention crucial events that occurred at what Dante termed “the middle of life.”

In November 1981, I received a phone call from Gerald Freund, who headed a recently launched program at the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation. Like many other academics I had heard of the Prize Fellows program, nicknamed the “genius award,” and had even expressed an interest in studying those who had received the award. And I knew—because he had told me—that a University of Indiana linguist named Thomas Sebeok had nominated me for the award. Nonetheless, since I am rarely optimistic about anything, I had not expected to receive the award, at that time $196,000, tax free, spread over five years, with all medical expenses covered.2

Receiving the award changed my life. When I received that call, I had tears in my eyes and heaved a huge sigh of relief. I had been raising money for my salary for the preceding decade and I was tiring of this precarious lifestyle, as was my family. Equipped with this windfall in money and the associated prestige, I went to see the dean of my school, Patricia Graham, who had succeeded Dean Ylvisaker. I told the dean that if I could not be made a professor in five years, I would move to another campus. This was scarcely a threat; at haughty Harvard, such a speech act would not have any effect, unless it were a negative one. But Dean Graham saw it to it that within five years, I did indeed become a professor, giving me a new and far more permanent descriptor to add to my name.

I should also share the most personal part of my life. With Judy Krieger Gardner, whom I’d met and fell in love with right after college and married less than a year later, I had three children: Kerith (1969), Jay (1971), and Andrew (1976).

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