Howard Gardner

One of the featured speakers at the ISI is Howard Gardner who became most well known for his work on "multiple intelligences". In his latest book, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed, Professor Gardner discusses ethics in the modern age and the timeliness of ethereal behavior and how it is impacted by the 21st Century. This issue of educating for Middot (character education) is one that is relevant to all Jewish Day Schools and is a strong example of the relationship between our professional development at ISI and our role as stewards of Jewish learning and commitment. Please take a moment to read his article from today's Philadelphia Inquirer about the Harvard cheating scandal (thank you Steve). I invite comments about this issue but also work that you have been doing in your own schools (successfully or otherwise) around the issue of character education. For your information, I am including a biography of Professor Gardner below.

BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD GARDNER

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities, including institutions in Bulgaria, Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, and South Korea. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. Most recently, he was bestowed with the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences, which aims "to reward the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanistic work." The author of 25 books translated into 28 languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments. © 2008 R. Sepulveda-EL TIEMPO . During the past two decades, Gardner and colleagues at Project Zero have been involved in the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy; and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education.