On the Publication of One Person’s Essential Writings—Mine!
Howard Gardner © 2024
When young, I spent a lot of time in libraries—and was duly impressed by the dark-colored bound volumes bearing a legend like: The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin or William Shakespeare: Complete Plays and Sonnets…as well as those with comparable titles in other languages: Gesammelte Schriften: Werke or Oeurvres Rassemblees. Certainly subsequent generations deserve to have available in convenient and well-edited form all that Immanuel Kant or Jean-Paul Sartre deemed worthy of publication.
I write almost every day; my CV chronicles more than 30 books and over 1,000 articles. No one—not even my devoted mother (Hilde 1911-2013)—should have to read all of those scribbles, particularly because I myself disagree with—or would distance myself from—some of what I wrote years ago.
That said, I admire what my late friend Howard (Howie) Gruber did forty years ago. He reviewed the voluminous output of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Gruber then put together a collection of Piaget’s most important and most influential writings, with the attractive title The Essential Piaget.
And so, when Teachers College Press—a much-admired educationally-oriented press, with whom both I and my wife Ellen Winner had previously published—expressed an interest (or at least a willingness!) to publish a selection of my writings, I leapt at the opportunity.
The first decision was easy. In much of the world, I am known chiefly as an educator and as a writer about education—and particularly for my “theory of multiple intelligences” or “MI theory,” presented originally in Frames of Mind (1983). Clearly much of the collective effort needed to be focused on education.
But from a young age, I have been interested in the human mind in all of its width and variety—and half of my writings have the word mind in the title—from Creating Minds and Leading Minds to Art, Mind, and Brain and The Shattered Mind.
Accordingly, we now have available two collections: The Essential Howard Gardner on Education (May 2024) and The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind (September 2024).
Voila!
But before publication was possible, the greater challenges: what to choose, what to exclude, what to change, what to keep, and—most important—how to tie these disparate word-strings together so the final volume is not simply a bound set of articles or book chapters. (I solved the latter labelling conundrum by terming each of the 50+ pieces essays.)
I make no assumption that what I did was right for me—let alone for others—but it may nonetheless be worthwhile to share my own thinking.
Two decisions proved relatively easy to make:
I was not simply going to reprint those articles or chapters (as noted, hereafter: essays) that are most cited—this is not a popularity contest, nor a list of “the greatest hits.”
I was not simply going to publish the articles or chapters unchanged—clear mistakes or blatant anachronisms needed to be eliminated or corrected. On the other hand, I was not going to sanitize the chapters unduly. If an article used man or he generically, I would keep it that way. Instead, I offered a general explanation—or, if you’d like, an apology—for pieces whose words and examples were clearly chosen in the 1970s, rather than a half-century later.
Now to the more difficult decisions:
A. Which essays to include…
Here, with respect to the two collections, I followed different strategies:
In the case of Mind, I take a chronological approach. The essays generally reflect or designate the time in my life when I worked on issues. The arts and brain damage come up early in the book (1970s); creating and leading minds in the middle (1980s-1990s); the synthesizing mind, good work, and artificial intelligence in the final sections.
In contrast, in the case of Education, I embrace a topical or thematic approach. I begin with the individuals, schools, and educational systems that influenced me; then I review in considerable detail the idea of multiple intelligences and how it has been applied (and misapplied) in many ways and across many contexts; and I round up the collection with reflections on considerations that always preoccupy educators: curricula, pedagogy, and assessment.
Each volume ends on a personal note: In Mind, I describe the lines of work that I hope my students (and others) might carry out in the future. In Education, I offer advice to students who are planning to conduct research in the area of education.
We might say that in these finales, I peer toward the future.
In both cases, the volume captures two conversations: what I’d like to share with those individuals who will read through the book; my attempt to explain to myself what I thought and wrote about at various times in my life, and how I think about them today.
We might term it a literary psychoanalysis!
B. Whether to provide context or allow articles to speak for themselves:
Because I am sympathetic to biographical information, most essays are introduced by what I have dubbed legends. Via these short pieces, I indicate what motivated me to write the article or essay; where it fits into my own development; and, looking ahead, how it might point to or anticipate subsequent lines of work. I term these autobiographical writing notes “legends” to distinguish them from other autobiographical efforts that I’ve undertaken. (See particularly, A Synthesizing Mind, and Life, Mind. and Work of Howard Gardner.)
Of course, readers are free to skip the legends or to argue with them—and perhaps, some time, I might revisit the legends as well…lest they become solely legendary!
C. The question of values
Writing in 2024, I have very strong feelings about what is happening in our world politically, with respect to the environment, governance, scholarship; as well as clear conceptions of what it means to be a good person and a good citizen in our time. I did not feel it was acceptable simply to delete mention of the world situation at the time of publication; but I have sought principally to capture the development of my thinking over time.
The Actual Work
Truth to tell, the selection of essays and the creation of legends was time-consuming—but it was also rewarding. Not so for the actual assembling of the content. To call this “arduous” would be a colossal understatement.
It was necessary to:
locate the original texts (often the publication was no longer available);
reprint them, photocopy them, or retype them;
gain permission to reprint them—this was a nightmare. Some holders of copyrights never responded. When finally reached, some holders requested four- ($3000-4000) or even five-figure payments ($12,000)!
Fortunately in these outlandish cases, we were usually able to locate journal editors who negotiated a lower fee or even waived the fee altogether. Thanks to these hardy and courageous souls!
Happily, my wonderful associates Shinri Furuzawa and Annie Stachura handled the bulk of these tasks—with good spirits—and even wrote about the obstacles that they encountered. It’s worth perusing their essay, which explains why the Authors Guild has no interest in one of its authors.
And more good news: Over my lifetime, I have worked with many publishers, editors, copyeditors, and compositors—working with TC Press was an excellent experience—I give them Very High Grades.
Hope that you are stimulated to look into these volumes. And if you do, I’d be delighted to learn your thoughts, criticisms, and suggestions.
REFERENCES
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (2020). A synthesizing mind. MIT Press.
Gruber, H. (1977). (and in some editions, Voneche, J.) The essential Piaget. Basic Books.
Kessel, F. (2025) Pillars of developmental psychology: recollections and reflections. Cambridge University Press.
Kornhaber, M. and Winner, E. (2014). Mind, Work, and Life: A festschrift on the occasion of Howard Gardner’s 70th Birthday. The Offices of Howard Gardner.