This reading “Five Minds for the Future” by Howard Garder breaks down the cognitive abilities that will be developed in the future: the disciplinary mind, the synthesising mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind.

The disciplinary mind: able to perform certain activity and develop skills over time
The synthesising mind: ability to process and digest information according to particular situation
The creating mind: ability to discover and generate new ideas, problems and solutions
The respectful mind: awareness of their surrounding people and able to emphasise their situation
The ethical mind: awareness of their responsibilities of their roles in the society and the world

I would divide these five minds into two parts, categorise the first three as an interpersonal skill and the last two as a person’s character and personality. The society demands so much nowadays that they wish every new entry levels or fresh graduates to hold all these five minds, which I would say, all-rounder since they both have knowledge, skills and good character. But of course, looking at how globalisation and technology have changed over the years, people get distracted so easily by their personal gadgets. For example, on-line or in-app news start to replace newspapers, and that leads to hundreds of mobile apps while having the same aim as one another: to deliver the news. I would say sooner or later our generation will lack creativity because of the overwhelming information.

“We should be concerned with how to nurture these minds in the younger generation, those who are being educated currently to become the leaders of tomorrow”.
Garder, (2007).

I totally support what Garder had said because fresh graduates are new in the society and the people who are already in the industry or workforce are obviously their seniors. Thus, the seniors should show guidance and support to the younger generation so the society would have more all-rounder youngsters in the workforce who would make a difference one day. I also think that this is important to be part of the education system as well, especially Asian countries schooling system. Students tend to sit in class, listen and copy notes off from the blackboard, and in the end, a majority of the students would be timider to speak up.

Regarding creativity as well, I have seen my 8-year-old young cousin got a zero mark for Moral Studies just because his answers are a bit ‘different’ from the expected answer. The picture showed a young boy holding a drumstick in his sister’s bowl and they were sitting happily together. This was a ‘Describe the Picture’ section. According to the teacher, the answer was supposed to be “My brother is loving. He shares his drumstick with me,” but my cousin wrote “My brother is hungry. He is taking my drumstick away.” I was laughing it off, but the teacher gave my cousin a big cross over the answers. The answer could have been seen as a very creative answer but the teacher said that it was Moral Studies so the answers had to be morally right. My cousin asked for an explanation why couldn’t the brother be hungry, and the teacher just said that was just not the answer. Most of the times, answers are given but not the explanations. This would cause one to lose creativity bit by bit, and send his creativity to death eventually. I hope that the education system would change in the future, focusing on every individual trait of someone, and allow the future generations to have their space to go further towards their interest while not losing their ethical character and attitude.

Garder, H. (2007). Five Minds For The Future. Harvard Business, School Press, Boston.