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Festschrift Volumes 1 2 Final
Festschrift Volumes 1 2 Final
In his hometown, Scranton, PA, there is a school that is called the
Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence Charter School. Several years ago,
Howard visited (it was then a private institution, the Howard Gardner
School for Discovery) and gave a lecture. As he tells the storywith
characteristic modestyduring the visit, he passed a group of students
and overheard them remark, Theres the man who is named for our
school. This anecdote reveals a piece of what it is like to walk in
Howards shoes. He may unintentionally have created a cognitive puzzle
worthy of Piagetian analysis, but the childrens misattribution
notwithstanding, he is an intellectual rock star whose ideas have
shaped public discourse and whose recognition is well-deserved.
For more than half a century Howard has made Cambridge, and
Harvard University, the center of his universe. But, perhaps like his
unassuming self-presentation, his place-centeredness masks his
worldliness and the international reach of ideas. In this age of celebrity,
Howard is an unusual figure. For a scholar, he has high public name
recognition, and he travels widely to disseminate his own work and also
to learn from others. But his ideas are even better known than his
persona. Practitioners in a wide variety of areas have adopted his ideas,
sometimes in ways that make him cringe, but often in ways that make
their practice more mindful, more ethical, and more effective. As one
who has had an insiders view of how his career unfoldedmy
perspective is both as a fellow research psychologist and as his brother-
in-lawwhat is most extraordinary is how Howard has leaped beyond
the metaphoric boundaries of Cambridge to become a thought-leader of
several different communities of practice. Like the moniker given the
founder of the modern discipline of social psychology, Kurt Lewin,