All Kinds of Minds

The name of this blog is "All Kinds of Minds".  I took this title from a Ted Talk by Temple Grandin where she discussed the different ways of knowing and ends with the statement, The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.  This is even more true today than ever before. Yet schools focus on one type of learning which looks like achievement on tests and prescribed written assignments.  This achievement focus is mostly oriented towards tasks requring executive function, linear problem solving, memorization/regurgitation of facts, and standard analytic thinking.  What we do not regard as important are the arts, creativity and intuitive knowing. These are the skill(ability)-sets of the future.

The arts are a tool for developing higher cogntive abilities related to mental sensitivities.  How do creative people come up with ideas?  They meditate and contemplate possibilities.  These ideas seem to come often from divine inspiration.

We are not going to solve todays problems with yesterdays solutions.  Creativity needs to be upgraded from, a fun thing for artists and outsiders, to a central cognitive capacity that we must develop to its maximum potential in all of our students.