Howard Gardner's Good Work Project!

"Success is being evaluated in one dimension only, and that is getting wealthy at all costs." 

Howard Gardner

I read this interesting article about Howard Gardner's study of Good Work. The GoodWork™ Project is a large scale effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work – work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners – and to determine how best to increase the incidence of good work in our society. Gardner and his colleagues have developed a model for forward thinking that should be explored by anyone really interested in developing our educational system. "Good Work is about how we can help young people live a life of good work and good citizenship. We and the youth whom we hope to inspire should strive to live by 3 E's, which are firstly, technical Excellence (the worker knows his work and keeps up with the latest knowledge and techniques); secondly, being Engaged in the world around us (it feels good, it feels right, and it is personally engaging); and finally, good work is good in a moral sense, and that means it is carried out Ethically in a way that is responsible. The biggest communities in which young people now reside are online communities. These are like the "wild west" - there are no solid norms, and so everyone is going her own way or improvising. At our GoodPlay project (see goodworkproject.org) we are trying to work out suitable ethics and citizenship for these young people, our future leaders. At that site you can read about our collaborations with the New Media Literacies project and Common Sense Media. We should be assessing values, discipline, respectfulness and good citizenship. The traditional British system of knowledgeable inspectors is the best way that I know. Judgment by informed, disinterested (in the literal sense of that word), and wise individuals is the way that we can and should make our most important decisions as a society, and indeed, as a planet."

You can find out more by visiting goodworkproject.org and goodworktoolkit.org.

Chris