• HOME
  • BOOKS
  • BLOG
  • PRESENTATIONS
  • MEDIA
  • BIO
  • CONTACT

PasiSahlberg.com

  • HOME
  • BOOKS
  • BLOG
  • PRESENTATIONS
  • MEDIA
  • BIO
  • CONTACT
Home / post / Howard Gardner’s comment on “Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools”
Pasi Sahlberg Portrait
BLOG by pasi sahlberg Sat 26, 2014 17:29

Howard Gardner’s comment on “Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools”

You have written a thought-provoking piece, noting that the United States may produce promising ideas in education but lags in the implementation of those ideas—except perhaps the proliferation of standardized, high stake testing.

A few comments:

1. In the US, experimentation has too often occurred in so-called “junk works”, which are separate from the funding source. The most dramatic example is Xerox PARC—a research setting that developed many important ideas and practices in the digital world, only to have them scooped up by rival Apple.

2. The ideas you mentioned can all be found somewhere in the U.S. but our public system is so scattered that it’s hard to make changes that have wider impact.   Independent schools and charter schools have more space to experiment but again the changes do not spread easily—the ‘lone cowboy’ phenomenon.

3. An even more dramatic example of the phenomenon that you describe is chronicled in Loren Graham’s recent book LONELY IDEAS: CAN RUSSIA COMPETE?  Graham chronicles how so many wonderful ideas emerged in Russia in the last century or two but they were almost all monetized elsewhere…except the Kalashnikov rifle!

4. Thanks for the mention of multiple intelligences (MI) theory. You might find of interest a just published book : FROM THE IVORY TOWER TO THE SCHOOLHOUSE. David Schneider traces four ideas that became well known by American educators, including MI theory, and compares those ideas to others that superficially seem similar—in the MI case, Robert Sternberg’s ‘triarchic theory of intelligence.’ The other ideas are Bloom’s taxonomy, the project method, and direct instruction.

5. Finally, I would add that while ideas like the ones that you mentioned may have come from American scholars, none of us worked in a vacuum. (I was greatly influenced by Piaget, Levi-Strauss, Vygotsky, Luria, and many others) Both the amount of money available for research (from both public and private sources) and the freedom for research at the major colleges and universities enabled the emergence of interesting ideas in the social sciences, with implications for education.  I worry that period is over—Accordingly my current research is designed to help invigorate “liberal arts and sciences in the 21st century.”

 

Howard Gardner

Harvard University

Graduate School of Education

Share this post:

Tweet / Share / Share /
    • News
    • Events

Previous post Five U.S. innovations that helped Finland’s schools improve but that American reformers now ignore

Previous post A Conversation On Lessons from Finland

RECENT POSTS

  • The Good News on Schools
  • Australia, Educational Lone Wolf?
  • Understanding Equity in Education. Part 2: What can we do?
  • Suomalainen koulu takaisin maailman huipulle
  • If Australia wants to improve school outcomes, we need to define what ‘equity’ really means

BLOGS I READ

  • Diane Ravitch's Blog
  • FreshEd with Will Brehm
  • The Answer Sheet by Valerie Strauss
  • Yong Zhao Blog
  • Martti Hellström Blogi

SUGGESTED READING

  • Education and the Commercial Mindset by Sam Abrams
  • Slaying Goliath by Diane Ravitch
  • What Works May Hurt by Yong Zhao
  • The Element by Sir Ken Robinson
  • My recent articles via ORCID
  • HOME
  • BOOKS
  • BLOG
  • PRESENTATIONS
  • MEDIA
  • BIO
  • CONTACT

© PASI SAHLBERG, 2017. All Rights Reserved.