So what kind of reasoning mind will survive and thrive in the future? Talk about a real-life test to determine what has been learned -- could it have gotten any more real-life for these fine young sailors? I flashed on Prince Harry's commission and upcoming deployment to Iraq, and wondered how well his extremely elite education has prepared him to face Unreason?

Then I wondered how education and cognitive psychology expert Howard Gardner would apply his theories to what happened today? Would these five kinds of minds win decisively against international terrorism and domestic dominionism, and if so, why aren't we emphasizing THESE as dead-serious survival skills for individuals and humanity, and education itself?

Instead of beginning (and, all too often, ending) with test scores, we should begin by considering the kinds of minds that we want to cultivate in our education system.
My own reflections suggest that in the future, we need to cultivate five kinds of minds if we want to be successful asa nation and, more important, as a world. Those minds include:

. A disciplined mind, that can think well and appropriately in the major
disciplines;

. A synthesizing mind, that can sift through a large amount of
information, decide what is important, and put it together in ways that
make sense for oneself and for others;

. A creative mind, that can raise new questions, come up with novel
solutions, think outside the box;

. A respectful mind, that honors the differences among individuals and
groups, and tries to understand them and work productively with them; and

. An ethical mind, that thinks, beyond selfish interests, about the kind
of worker one aspires to be, and the kind of citizen that one should be.

No doubt, some measures for each of these could be devised, though I doubt that a paper-and-pencil or computer-administered, short-answer test will prove adequate. But the important point is this: Any country–and certainly one as prosperous and well-positioned as the United States–should begin educational discussions with a serious consideration of the kinds of human beings we would like to have and to be in the future.

And that is why the education ministers of the world remind me today of lemmings–marching confidently, but proudly and disastrously, into a sea of ignorance.

(Crossposted at Snook)