“Ellen Galinsky—already the go-to person on interaction between families and the workplace—draws on fresh research to explain what we ought to be teaching our children. This is must-reading for everyone who cares about America’s fate in the 21st century.” — Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent for The PBS NewsHour Families and Work Institute President Ellen Galinsky (Ask the Children, The Six Stages of Parenthood) presents a book of groundbreaking advice based on the latest research on child development.
How you can become better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills We solve countless problems—big and small—every day. With so much practice, why do we often have trouble making simple decisions—much less arriving at optimal solutions to important questions? Are we doomed to this muddle—or is there a practical way to learn to think more effectively and creatively? In this enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring book, Edward Burger shows how we can become far better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills using simple, effective thinking techniques. Making Up Your Own Mind teaches these techniques—including how to ask good questions, fail and try again, and change your mind—and then helps you practice them with fun verbal and visual puzzles. The goal is not to quickly solve each challenge but to come up with as many different ways of thinking about it as possible. As you see the puzzles in ever-greater depth, your mind will change, helping you become a more imaginative and creative thinker in daily life. And learning how to be a better thinker pays off in incalculable ways for anyone—including students, businesspeople, professionals, athletes, artists, leaders, and lifelong learners. A book about changing your mind and creating an even better version of yourself through mental play, Making Up Your Own Mind will delight and reward anyone who wants to learn how to find better solutions to life’s innumerable puzzles. And the puzzles extend to the thought-provoking format of the book itself because one of the later short chapters is printed upside down while another is printed in mirror image, further challenging the reader to see the world through different perspectives and make new meaning.
The Mind in the Making is a book to awaken every reader to a real understanding of why he thinks and acts as he does. It is the well-known historian's straightforward account of how our intelligence has evolved into the mental habits of modern life. No book for popular reading shows so graphically that our thinking remains medieval in a world that has become complex and modern. It will show you whether your thinking is ahead of the times or behind them. If some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways of looking at themselves and their fellows, no inconsiderable part of the evils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselves automatically. If the majority of influential persons held the opinions and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential people now do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another great war; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption, and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point.
Using the findings of recent neuroscience, a psychologist reveals what sets humans apart from all other species, offering a fascinating exploration of our marvelous and sometimes frightening cognitive abilities and potentials. According to human genome research, there is a remarkable degree of overlap in the DNA of humans and chimpanzees. So what accounts for the rapid development of human culture throughout history and the extraordinary creative and destructive aspects of human behavior that make us so different from our primate cousins? Kellogg explores in detail five distinctive parts of human cognition. These are the executive functions of working memory; a social intelligence with "mind-reading" abilities; a capacity for symbolic thought and language; an inner voice that interprets conscious experiences by making causal inferences; and a means for mental time travel to past events and imagined futures. He argues that it is the interaction of these five components that results in our uniquely human mind. This is especially true for three quintessentially human endeavors-morality, spirituality, and literacy, which can be understood only in light of the whole ensemble's interactive effects. Kellogg recaps the story of the human mind and speculates on its future. How might the Internet, 24/7 television, and smart phones affect the way the mind functions?
Written by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Making Up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world. Uses evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments and studies of patients to explore the relationship between the mind and the brain Demonstrates that our knowledge of both the mental and physical comes to us through models created by our brain Shows how the brain makes communication of ideas from one mind to another possible
Developmental psychologists coined the term "theory of mind" to describe how we understand our shifting mental states in daily life. Over the past twenty years researchers have provided rich, provocative data showing that from an early age, children develop a sophisticated and consistent "theory of mind" by attributing their desires, beliefs, and emotions to themselves and to others. Remarkably, infants barely a few months old are able to attend closely to other humans; two-year-olds can articulate the desires and feelings of others and comfort those in distress; and three- and four-year-olds can talk about thoughts abstractly and engage in lies and trickery. This book provides a deeper examination of how "theory of mind" develops. Building on his pioneering research in The Child's Theory of Mind (1990), Henry M. Wellman reports on all that we have learned in the past twenty years with chapters on evolution and the brain bases of theory of mind, and updated explanations of theory theory and later theoretical developments, including how children conceive of extraordinary minds such as those belonging to superheroes or supernatural beings. Engaging and accessibly written, Wellman's work will appeal especially to scholars and students working in psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, and social cognition.
Offers real-life stories, items, and methods that allow for a deeper understanding of any issue, provide the power to use failure as a step toward success, and develop a habit of creating probing questions.
If free market advocates had total control over education policy, would the shared public system of education collapse? Would school choice revitalize schooling with its innovative force? With proliferating charters and voucher schemes, would the United States finally make a dramatic break with its past and expand parental choice? Those are not only the wrong questions—they’re the wrong premises, argue philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath and historian Michael C. Johanek in Making Up Our Mind. Market-driven school choices aren’t new. They predate the republic, and for generations parents have chosen to educate their children through an evolving mix of publicly supported, private, charitable, and entrepreneurial enterprises. The question is not whether to have school choice. It is how we will regulate who has which choices in our mixed market for schooling—and what we, as a nation, hope to accomplish with that mix of choices. Looking beyond the simplistic divide between those who oppose government intervention and those who support public education, the authors make the case for a structured landscape of choice in schooling, one that protects the interests of children and of society, while also identifying key shared values on which a broadly acceptable policy could rest.
"Making the Human Mind" is an attack on the widespread assumption that the mind has parts and that it is the interaction between these parts which accounts for some of the most characteristic human behaviour, the sorts of irrational behaviour displayed in self-deception and weakness of will. The implications of this attack are considerable: Professor Sharpe contests a realism about the mind, the belief that there is an inventory which an all-seeing deity could compile and which could contain answers to all the questions we could ask about people. With this goes a hermeneutic approach to the understanding of human behaviour: these forms of understanding are markedly different from that suggested by the scientific model and favoured by those who partition the mind. Finally, the author undermines eliminative materialism and the idea that the way we talk about the mind constitutes a "folk psychology", arguing that what is distinctively human about the human mind has been created by self-consciousness and is self-created.
