Beyond the Herd Mentality

The Minds That We Truly Need in the Future

By Howard Gardner

As an educational researcher and writer, I have had the opportunity to travel throughout the world. In conversations with education policymakers, I have made an interesting, though unsettling, discovery. The new purpose of education around the world can be expressed succinctly: It is to improve, or in rare cases to maintain, a country’s standing in quantitative international comparisons, most often the Program for International Student Assessment or the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with having a high standing in some kind of international comparison. No doubt there are things to be learned from effective schools in countries like Finland or Singapore. And yet, the more I have thought about it, the more I have become convinced that the goal of topping the international comparisons is a foolish one, and the rush to raise one’s rank a fool’s errand. In the process of pursuing a higher rank, educational leaders are ignoring deeper and more important purposes of education.

Let’s begin with the obvious. Only a few countries can have the lead in these “league-table comparisons.” And so, as in Olympic-level basketball, backgammon, or ballet, most countries are destined to be disappointed, and most ministers of education advised to shift portfolios before the...