The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Howard Gardner is well known to teachereducators,particularlyforhisearlier book,Frames ofMind: The Theory ofMuir tipleInteUigences(1983). Morerecently, the ConferenceonArtistic Intelligences (1989) and the development of Arts PROPEL havefamiliarized musicteacher educators even more specifically with Gardner's work. In The Unschooled Mind (1991), Gardnercontinues topricktheconsciences ofeducators by gettingdown to the very heartofthematter. Schools, hesays, do not nowteachthewaychildrenlearn, andoften what children learn before or outside of school is more powerful than competing information presented in school and can interferewithschool-delivered knowledge. Gardnercontendsin hisintroductory material that schools, even when publicly acknowledged as successful, are failing at their most critical task-teaching for real understanding. As always, Gardner provides examples that areabundantandtothe point. He offers evidence that early-developed ideas, stereotypes, and "scripts" (descriptions of recurrent events) continueto dominate the thinking of even advanced