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October 9
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Howard Gardner
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October 9 Event
Dr. Gardner to speak about his latest book, Good Work




Good Work at Harvard

by Howard Gardner

It's been 40 years since I entered Harvard Yard as a Freshman. (It's arresting for me to consider that our new President Lawrence Summers was in kindergarten at the time). Moreover, unlike other Harvard students who eventually became faculty, I've never left Cambridge. And so, the scene of students returning to school, unloading their cars, and shopping for classes is all too familiar to me. And yet, this year seems very different to me, because I feel "on the line" in a way that I have not before.

About the time that you read these lines, a book that I've co-authored with Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi and William Damon will be arriving on the shelves of the Harvard Book Store. The book is called Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet. As the subtitle suggests, 'good work' is at once excellent in quality and also seeks to be responsible to broader societal concerns. While the book focuses on two crucial professions -- journalism and genetics -- it addresses the question of how any professional can succeed in carrying out good work at a time when things are changing so quickly, market forces have unprecedented power, and our whole sense of time and space has been radically altered by technologies like the Web.

So why should the appearance of my 20th book make me feel make me feel differently? It's because for the first time in my life, I have moved from the relatively comfortable role of being a scholar-commentator to the far more public role of being a social critic and an advocate of policy. As a cognitive psychologist, I have written a good deal about topics like intelligence, creativity, and leadership, but always from a rather Olympian pose.

Now, however, I (along with my colleagues) offer specific critiques of a society where good work is increasingly elusive, indicate what makes for good and bad work (and good and bad workers!), and align ourselves unambiguously with those who feel that our society needs to be much healthier than it currently is.

No doubt many individuals will take issue with our specific claims -- for example, that a market approach to various spheres makes it difficult to carry out good work. We welcome such debate. But it will also be fair for individuals to look at me and to say "Is he a good worker? Has he earned the right to tell others how they should lead their professional lives?" Moreover, it won't be enough for me just to be on my best behavior as a teacher and researcher for the coming academic year. There can properly be an expectation that I interact with my own students and my own research team in a way that facilitates their own execution of good work -- that their efforts embody both excellence and a sense of responsibility.

The individuals and foundations that have been kind enough to fund our work have often asked me "What do you see as the result of the 'Good Work project'?" Perhaps too glibly, I have responded "I hope that people will come to ask of individuals 'Is he (or is she) a good worker?'" And so, like the physicians since the time of Hippocrates, I must look in the mirror each day and say "Worker, heal thyself."

Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet will be published on October 1 by Basic Books. The Good Work Project's web site is goodworkproject.org.

Authors Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, and Damon will speak at the Askwith Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on October 9, 2001. See our Author Events schedule here.

 

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