Howard Gardner's Creating Minds

This study will critique Howard Gardner's Creating Minds, examining such matters as the nature of creativity and whether it is a quality one is born with or learns. The study will also consider whether the author's anatomy of creativity is valid for creative individuals today, whether Western society primarily values "logical-mathematical" and "bodily-kinesthetic" intelligence, and what the impact of these social emphases is on the youth of the culture. Of particular interest to this study will be the turning to drugs by youths whose creative impulses--- other than through math/science or sports---are not nurtured by society.

At the heart of creativity for Gardner is childhood. Throughout the book the child, child-likeness, and childhood play major roles both in the nurturing of creativity and as major components in the exercise of creativity and the products produced by that exercise. It is clear, then, that, if childhood lacks these nurturing efforts, if society fails to provide such encouragement and guidance in a creative sense, the youth will not be able to exercise his or her natural creative impulses. He or she will not be able to fulfill himself in this vital realm, he will experience low self-worth, and as a result he will be more likely to seek escape and relief in some diversion such as drugs.

In the Preface, Gardner emphasizes his own experiences as a youth which led to a creative life:

As a studious youngster . . . I loved to read. What captured my interest m

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and institutions) would be Bill Gates, the billionaire of Microsoft computer fame (representing the logical-mathematical domain), and Michael Jordan, retired superstar of basketball (representing the bodily-kinesthetic domain). Gates is actually more famous for his wealth than for his computer innovations, and certainly a part of the measure of Jordan's fame is found in his income, including his multi-million dollar endorsements of shoes and other products. The most acclaimed creative people in American culture are in general those who appeal to the masses (in sports, movies and television) and who phenomenal amounts of money---not those who alter the more lofty domains of dance, poetry, psychology, music, or the special realm of Gandhi in which world politics were re-formulated. It is telling that instead of the serious psychological studies of Freud, American society honors the randy shenanigans of sex-therapist/talkshow guest Dr. Ruth. Gardner writes correctly that "there is no order of priority among intelligences, nor is there order with respect to the question of whose work is more important, more innovative, or more creative than that of others" (Gardner, 1993, p. 45). Whatever the domains of the seven creative individua

Category: Psychology - H