A Whole New Mind

A Whole New Mind

I just finished reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books, 2005). In this book, he argues that we are headed toward a conceptual age of work, which he describes as “high concept” and “high touch.” That argument depends on an accumulation of advances and accomplishments that he traces over the last 150 years, beginning in the industrial age and then on to the information age. In the industrial age, what mattered most was a person’s strength. Next came the information age, and then it was a person’s knowledge that mattered most, and not just any knowledge, but the logical, analytical functioning typically associated with the left half of the brain. Of course, Pink is painting an economic and not social picture as the basis for his argument. A social history of employment would have to include the reality that millions of workers faced, that their race, ethnicity, and religion mattered more than their ability to perform work well. Even to acknowledge where we were or how far we have come socially would be beside his point, but readers who know the history of that social struggle know well that an economic thumbnail sketch of work tells but part of the story. Economically, most would agree that from hunters and gathers we have evolved to farmers and then to industrial workers and then to an era of work where analytical, rational thinking mattered more than one’s physical capacities. Pink claims to have insight into what comes next.

According to Pink, we have entered the conceptual age, and it is important to observe how he thinks we got here. In scale and extent, the industrial age has produced an abundance of goods unprecedented in economic history. Three percent of all families had electricity in 1900; among poor families in 1970, 99 percent had electricity. In 1900, one percent of all families owned a car; among poor families in 1970, 41 percent owned a car (S. Lebergott, The American Economy, Princeton University Press, 1976). In 2004, 92 percent of all American families owned cars (http://www.hwwilson.com/print/RS_car_preface.htm, accessed 9/20/09). Again, Pink is speaking generally, but the point is that the supply and demand for manufacturing goods on which we rely have been transformed. That transformation has been driven by the increasing connectivity in the world, or as Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat, Farar, Straus & Giroux, 2006)describes it, the flattening of the world. It is the case that as the world has become more educated, the jobs that were once done here can be accomplished by people with the same education but for much less money. We understand this phenomenon as consumers: if you could buy the same television for $700 or $2,500, which one would you buy? Manufacturers face the same question, but the difference is if your competitor can sell televisions for $700 but you have to charge $2,500, you will either a) find a way to compete or b) go out of business. I am not defending globalization, or neo-liberalism as it is called everywhere but the US. That phenomenon has happened before in history, but what is new is its reach. Pink is only observing what is happening, not necessarily approving neo-liberalism.

Not only manufacturing, left-brain work is being done somewhere else, and for the same reasons. Increased connectivity and a more educated world mean the skills of the much heralded knowledge economy are increasingly performed outside the US or by a computer. Thus Pink’s three questions for all future workers:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I am offering in demand in an age of abundance?

If the answer to question one or two is yes or if the answer to three is no, Pink asserts, ‘you’re in big trouble” (p. 51). Workers in the conceptual age will need the eponymous “whole new mind,” which has six senses: Design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Most of this book elaborates what he means by these six senses.

Only time will determine whether Pink’s conceptual age comes about as he describes it or in some altered form. It is probably significant when the new CEO of General Motors describes that company’s work as “the art business” (p. 53), and it may also be significant that the consulting giant McKinsey hired 18 percent fewer graduates of graduate business schools in 2003 than it did in 1993 (p. 54). The question for us at CVCS is whether as a school we are preparing for an economic era that is moving past the knowledge worker. Historically, schools in the US have, since the 1840s, been the social institution to carry out the work of society, the place where society’s anxieties about its social or economic future are played out (David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia, Harvard University Press, 1997). It is difficult to predict educational fashion, but if A Whole New Mind becomes the latest thing in state legislatures, schools will be called upon to deliver.

Even if schools are not called upon to prepare students for Pink’s “Conceptual Age,” it is worth asking how we measure up. I divide Pink’s six conceptual age senses into two groups.

The first group consists of design, story, and symphony. In those senses, a strong academic foundation strikes me as particularly important. Design must continue to be functional even if its aesthetic dimension is all the more important (think iPod, but also think airplane), and functionality will continue to follow the laws of nature. It does startle that medical students at Columbia University and at other medical schools study “narrative medicine” (p, 52), but to make sense of a medical narrative requires both a sensibility for storytelling and the medical knowledge to discern what is significant in the story the patient is telling. Symphony as a sense involves synthesis, and the more one knows the more profound the synthesis.

As for the other group, empathy, play, and meaning, those senses are best learned in a partnership between families and schools. John Rawls (Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, 1996) argues that social institutions should be organized on principles we all agree to, those that we can hold in common while maintaining our religious or comprehensive philosophical views. Although not writing about schools, as a social institution, the limits on schooling and the responsibility of families can be drawn along his public/private lines. That line has been challenged philosophically, but it works pretty well in schools as long as it is not a line of separation but a division of responsibilities. In our school, students do learn the values of empathy, play, and meaning, but parents are much more important in teaching those values. Whereas we teach them from the standpoint of what we have in common as citizens in a diverse society, families have the responsibility of teaching values from points of view that a public school according to Rawls cannot occupy. And yet as anyone who has been to our school knows, the empathy, play, and meaning students learn complement and do not compete with what families teach their children at home. CVCS represents what is possible when schools partner with families in empowering students to flourish.

I should point out that Pink does not say that analytical, logical thinking is no longer necessary. It will still be required. His point is that it will not be enough. Thus we should be gratified that our curriculum, with its emphasis on building a strong academic foundation, will continue to be important in whatever era comes next. We should also be confident that we offer CVCS students the foundation for the six conceptual age senses, relying once again on our strong partnership with families not only for the left-brained education of our students but for developing right-brained sensibilities Pink says everyone will need.