In his world famous treatise - "The Five Minds of the Future", Howard Gardner beautifully demystifies what he terms as "The disciplined mind". He emphasizes the need of humans to focus on the development of their cognitive ability in thinking through an issue as a specialist. He states that just acquiring, and remembering plethora of information and symbol system does not necessary makes one relevant in a domain. The need is about being able to apply the know-how of the symbol system, to think in a particular fashion, in order to solve a contemporary problem. There is a need of setting up what Howard Gardner terms "performance of understanding". Once the key information pertaining to a particular domain is mastered it is of utmost important for the scholar to perform his understanding of the symbol system into an unknown and a new scenario. Students and professionals need to be forced to stretch or flex their knowledge obtained by reading books, and attending lectures. Without this there is a possibility of facing the uncomfortable possibility that factual knowledge may have increased without a correlative increase in disciplinary sophistication.
Most of the education is focussed on the mastery of information. It is equally important to nurture a way of thinking in the students and professionals which can enable them to solve an unknown problem using the repertoire of the knowledge gained.
To be able to discipline the mind, it is required to attack the domain in consideration through "multiple entry points". Each of these entry points points to various multiple intelligences a human posses. Such an approach demonstrates what a genuine understanding is like. One cannot be disciplined without such a conceptual agility.
The absence of disciplinary thinking as discussed above, leads a person to be in a state where she forgoes her opportunity to benefit from the genuine progress achieved by learned individuals in the past few thousands years. The undisciplined mind is stranded in the same intellectual levels as the barbarians. They will not be able to have informed opinions of the events of the day, the year and the century. They feel alienated and stupid - or, equally bad they feel resentment, even hatred, vis-a-vis those who do seem to be able to perform their understandings in a disciplined manner.
Many people assert that it is what the experience which counts, and the theoretical scholarly pursuits are alienated from any real worth in the every day life. I firmly disagree with these opinions. It is of utmost importance to know and learn the latest knowledge base which is currently available. Without the knowledge base we basically march back to pre-historic age. The content is required. But the point here is that this content has to be complemented with a meaningful context, woven with a disciplined mind.
Having said this, Gardner goes further to table an important observation about a disciplined mind. He says, ""..Like most salient experiences of life (from orgasm to philanthropy), its achievement breeds desire for more. Once once has understood well a particular play, a particular war, a particular physical or biological or managerial concept, the appetite has been whetted for additional and deeper understanding. and for clear cut performances in which one's understanding can be demonstrated to others and oneself. Indeed the genuine understander is unlikely in the future to accept only superficial understanding. Rather having eaten from the tree of understanding, he or she is likely to return there repeatedly for ever more satisfying intellectual nourishment."
This sense of joy being derived from a scholarly pursuit helps the person to become passionate in the process of learning. The same applies to professionals. This push to become more and more aware, and make a meaningful difference, guides the professional who thus venture into exotic locales and attend institutes, giving up the opportunity to ski, snorkel, or play hooky, or go for a holiday trip.
As Plato remarked so many years ago, "Through education we need to help students find pleasure in what they have to learn".
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