Collection

A Whole New Mind: Education for the 21st Century

Curated by Stephanie Vanderslice
March 01, 2011

First published in 2005, A Whole New Mind argues that the future belongs to a new kind of person, with a different kind of mind “designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers—creative and emphatic right brain thinkers,” (jacket copy). This kind of future, Pink tells us, is navigable if we capitalize on those “right brain” qualities of “invention, empathy, joyfulness and meaning,” (Pink 3) that had previously been disdained in the left brained world. Making such a shift requires the convergence of a number of social forces, however, and one of these is education. The resources here show educators and their students leading the way toward this seismic change.

Exploring the the educational uses of Daniel Pink’s 21st century workplace analysis in A Whole New Mind, can inspire us to look at students, our teaching, and our classrooms in fruitful new ways.

Included in this collection is a YouTube video that provides a digital overview of the book and a link to an excerpt published in O, the Oprah magazine. Another resource, a student documentary, details what happened when students at Arapahoe High School in Colorado undertook the study of Pink’s book as a central text. Also included is Arapahoe teacher and blogger Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know” video that went viral in 2007. It’s interesting to view it from the point of view of the six senses Daniel Pink describes as important in the 21st century. How many can you spot?

What's Inside