The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests, the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves
by Howard Gardner

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Book Reviews of The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests, the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves

Book Review: A Disciplined Mind Without The "Disciplines"
Summary: 2 Stars

However, we can discern that he has a romantic obsession with beauty, truth, and goodness. I call these categories "romantic" becuase to define them as updating Greek philosophic traditions would not do justice to the Greeks. Rather, I think he is a more prosaic version of the poet Keats. Remember "Ode to a Grecian Urn?" "Beauty is truth and truth is beauty. That is all ye know and all ye need to know."

I think that in attacking E.D. Hirsch whom he calls the main speaker for "cultural literacy" he sets up a straw man. He says that this "other school" of thought has an underlying belief in the Lockeian "tabula rasa"; yet,as one who believes that education is inherently conservative and should pass down the cultural heritage from one generation to the next, I am not a believer in the tabula rasa.

I find a tendency on Prof. Gardner's part to oversimplify certain issues, like the Holocaust, and to overcomplicate certain others, like the nature of intelligence.

His writing style is a bit too fond of adjectives, and the book reads as a whole like It Takes A Village by Mrs. Clinton. On the whole, the work has a mellifluous style that seems self-consciously presenting itself as being both profound and filled with balanced common sense at the same time. Nonetheless, I fail to see an emphasis on knowledge, justice,Judeo-Christian values, persistence, responsibility, or character development...words which I find essential for a true philosophy of education.

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