Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter

In 2008, Howard Gardner, Ph.D. delivered a series of three lectures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he is a trustee, and that endeavor later resulted in his 2011 book, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter. In his lectures and book, Gardner argues against the prevailing notion, promulgated by both postmodern acolytes and the new digital media, that the virtues of truth, beauty and goodness are now quaint, having outlived their usefulness. Gardner finds it imperative to revisit and preserve these classic core virtues with a modern lens, and to examine what they mean in today’s reconfigured landscape. He extends his observations to offer educators (and parents and students) a roadmap as to how to engage in conversations and activities about these three virtues, both now and in the future.

Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University and senior director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from twenty-nine colleges and universities. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. Gardner received the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. The author of twenty-eight books translated into thirty-two languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences.