“5 minds for the future”, which falls under business & management category, is authored by Howard Gardner, 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 in1981. And 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.
The author’s approaches in this book are based on his background as a researcher in psychology focussing on human’s mind development, organization of mind, and what becomes of a mind at its fullest capacities. Studying mostly on how people learn, create, lead, and change the minds of others and themselves, the author also offered how we should use our minds.
The author emphasizes on five minds approach that are vital in nowadays life, and more importantly to ensure sustainability of mankind in years to come, namely:-
i) The disciplined mind – Distinctively mastered at least one way of thinking through the process of gaining knowledge and understanding through thought, experience etc.
ii) The synthesizing mind – Compilation and study of each source of information resulting to new combined sources that’s acceptable to the synthesizer and others.
iii) The creating mind – An innovator to new ideas and ultimately must gain acceptance from the knowledgeable audience.
iv) The respectful mind – Tolerance and respect among diverse individuals.
v) The ethical mind – Think beyond self interest and to do what is right under the circumstances.
In my opinion, these five minds have existed since the human civilization begins and have gone through significant changes over many years via modernization. However, most of the time each mind approach is practiced or at least being viewed individually. In the book, through study on existing ideas and thoughts, the author suggested that being well verse in the combination of these five minds shall equip us for the robustly changing environment and what’s interesting to me is educating readers of the importance of being an individual with well balanced thoughts.
At the earlier part of the book, the author has made its stance to oppose to the unrestricted free speech via mass media such as newspapers, in particular, the 2005 published cartoon by the Danish newspaper that ridiculed Muslim religion. According to the author, while there is no way to prevent harmful and hurtful materials being circulated, there is a need to distinguish between responsible press versus other medias like blogs, web sites etc., given the great diversity of human beings on earth.
I can relate the author’s statement to a book by Dale Carnegie titled “How To Win Friends And Influence People”, at one part suggesting that we should not criticize, condemn, or complain, in which to certain extent, complements the book “5 Minds For The Future”, to ensure our soft skill or humanity value is not jeopardized with the ongoing rapid growth and changes.
I find the book easy to comprehend, and can be read be anybody particularly educators and individuals at management level like trainers, motivators; leaders of governmental organization, religious group leaders, business leaders to name a few.
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