Harvard education scholar Howard Gardner - best known for his theory of multiple intelligences - says AI will make traditional academic skills optional for humans, and he believes schools should let students pursue their own interests by around age 10. In a recent conversation with education writer Rick Hess, Gardner laid out a vision for schooling that would look dramatically different from today's model, arguing that AI's cognitive powers mean most students will not need a dozen years of standardized classroom instruction.
Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, first began grappling with AI's educational implications when a visiting professor showed him how quickly AI could synthesize large volumes of information - a task Gardner had long considered distinctively human. His team now uses AI to code research interviews, and watching the technology do in moments what takes people many hours shifted his thinking.
He arrives at his current position through the framework of his famous theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner and colleagues wrote "Who Owns Intelligence?" in 2024, raising questions about how animal, plant, and artificial intelligences relate to human cognition.
Three minds, two exceptions
In his 2006 book Five Minds for the Future, Gardner argued that schools should cultivate what he called the disciplined, synthesizing, and creative minds, along with the respectful and ethical minds. Now he believes AI can handle the first three so well that "pursuing them will become optional for our species." Meanwhile, he said, "I think those both need to stay distinctly human, and I think those both need to stay distinctly human" - referring to the respectful and ethical minds.
"Anyone who wants to master a discipline, or to synthesize or create, has my complete respect and admiration," Gardner said.
A new shape for schooling
Gardner's vision for education is not the elimination of school, but a significantly different arrangement. He still expects every child to master reading, writing, math, and basic coding alongside peers in a school setting. But around age 10, once those basics are in hand, students should be free to pursue their own interests with AI and coaches.
Instead of students spending a dozen years being taught the same material in the same way, they'd profoundly benefit from learning through their own curiosity - guided across disciplines by the topics that hold their attention. Interest in genes, for example, could anchor explorations across biology, history, ethics, and statistics.
Gardner acknowledges that previous ed tech promises from the radio to the internet to the laptop have disappointed. "I agree that many earlier claims about ed tech have fallen short, but I'm confident this time is different," he said. "The question isn't whether to use AI but how, and with what benefits and costs."
Nor does he dismiss well-documented concerns from researchers like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge about the damage done by phones and screens to young people, including weakened social ties and strained mental health. Gardner, a grandfather five times over, says young people still need sustained in-person contact with peers and mentors in education and in community forms like what he suggests could resemble updated Boy Scouts or religious education classes. "What matters is that young people learn to work together, particularly on challenging ethical and moral issues."
On academic rigor, Gardner said he is "all in favor of deep grounding" in subjects, but he is of the view that pursuit of rigor has not worked. He noted more American teens once knew the Three Stooges by name than the three branches of government. "If we don't thoughtfully rethink education, we will be coming completely unable to deal with the not-always-brave-new world that technology has ushered in."
Why this matters for educators
For classroom teachers and school administrators, the takeaway is practical, not hypothetical. The professor's advice begins with learning to use AI, then deciding what to hand it. Train, experiment with it (and with your peers), and then decide what to "gift" or "consign" to the technology, and what to do yourself. Some faculty will find value in his framing - and the point isn't that every current approach must be replaced, but that treating the place of cognitive work and where and lessons happen, as an open question.
Your membership also unlocks:
