The Disciplined Mind. Howard Gardner. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1999.

Abstract

What is true, beautiful, and good? Using the theory of evolution, the musical genius of Mozart, and the horrors of the Holocaust, Howard Gardner, in The Disciplined Mind successfully assists students' and teachers' cultural understanding of their educational process as it relates to truth, beauty, and goodness. He does this by emphasizing that we should teach less but in more depth. By probing important issues in depth, we will be teaching much more. In pursuit of truth, Gardner links Darwin's development of systematic classification of living organisms to the understanding of topics that effect human beings today. In doing so, he manages to fmd common ground between the scientific and religious communities, despite the controversies surrounding the theory of evolution. He uses the power of music to depict the human condition in Mozart's work, "The Marriage of Figaro," in search of beauty as it appears in music and human relations. And, in pursuit of the good (and the ugly), Gardner uses the Holocaust and the atrocities associated with it, as a way to understand, not only the Holocaust, but also the human motivation behind such a horrific and elaborate endeavour