(Page 23 of 23) - Teaching Indirectly: On Liberal Learning in the 21st Century authored by Voparil, Christopher.

Gardner, Multiple Intelligences, p. 162.

Ibid, pp. 70, 161-165.

See Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1995 [1970].

Gardner, Multiple Intelligences, p. 72.

Ibid, p. 82.

Ibid, pp. 144-149. One of initiatives of Gardner and his colleagues at Harvard’s Project Zero is a program called Arts

PROPEL, whose approach (and acronym) emphasizes production, perception, reflection, and learning. See Multiple
Intelligences, chapter 9.

Ibid, pp. 174, 178. Gardner reproduces the guidelines for the processfolio assessment system in ibid, pp. 150-151. He

also reports progress being made in a collaboration between Project Zero and the Educational Testing Service (ETS)
responsible for the SAT and other standardized tests toward the development of procedures for evaluation projects and
portfolios. Ibid, p. 185.

Ibid, p. 188.

Striking examples of the lack of understanding can be found even at elite universities, like MIT and Johns Hopkins. In

one study, when asked to explain relatively simple phenomena, rather exceptional physics students provided incredibly
unlearned responses. Gardner observed not only that the students failed to give correct answers, but that the answers given
mirrored those of people who had never studied physics, including younger children. “Despite years of schooling,” he
concluded, rote learning of external curricula had ensured “the minds of these college students remain fundamentally
unschooled.” In Deweyan terms, their accumulated experiences failed to be reconstructed or renewed in any way. Gardner,
The Disciplined Mind, p. 120. For more on this research see Gardner’s, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and
How Schools Should Teach (New York: Basic Books, 1993).

Gardner, Multiple Intelligences, pp. 191, 202-203.

Dewey, “The School and Society,” p. 308.

Ibid, p. 309.

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers. (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1953), p. 390.

“The School and Society,” p. 309.

Ibid, pp. 299-310.

Ibid, pp. 304-306. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has recently argued that such development of the sympathetic or moral

imagination is a cornerstone of liberal education. See her Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal
Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

William James, “The Social Value of the College Bred,” in Bruce Kuklick (ed.), William James: Writings 1902-1910

(New York: The Library of America, 1987 [1907]), p. 1243.

Michael Oakeshott, “Learning and Teaching,” in his The Voice of Liberal Learning, ed. Timothy Fuller (Indianapolis:

Liberty Fund, 2001), pp. 45, 53.

Oakeshott, “A Place of Learning,” in The Voice of Liberal Learning, pp. 18, 30. See also “The Idea of a University” in

ibid, pp. 105-117.

“A Place of Learning,” pp. 6-8; “Learning and Teaching,” p. 40. See also “The Idea of a University,” 113-117.

“Learning and Teaching,” pp. 49-53.

Ibid, p. 57.

Ibid, pp. 59-60.

Ibid, p. 56. Here I am reminded of the complaint students often make about what they regard as unfair or “tricky” exams

that contain “surprises” or unfamiliar contexts. The problem lies less in the tricky questions than in the fact that little in the
preparation leading up to the exam was designed to impart the ability to think.

“Learning and Teaching,” p. 56.

“The Idea of a University,” p. 113.