Chronological Development Of Gardner's Thought Process example essay topic

John William Gardner John William Gardner was born in 1912. He is a noted author; a former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare; a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer; and among many additional accomplishments is currently a professor of public service at Stanford University. Gardner started his career as a psychology professor at Mt. Holyoke colleges. He then served his stint with the Marine Corps during World War II. One year after the culmination of the war Gardner joined the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Within three years he would progress to become its vice president and in 1955 the Carnegie Corporation's president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. From his position in the Carnegie Corporation Gardner would proceed this first presidential appointment when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in July 1965. Not satisfied with this position he would resign less than three years later to head up the National Urban Coalition. Two years later he would found Common Cause and serve a sits chairman between 1970 and 1977. Beginning in 1989 Gardner would serve inh is current position at Stanford University (Rasberry, 1992).

Gardner has been a prolific author. His books have dealt with a variety of subjects including such topics as self-improvement, morality, leadership, humanresourcedevelopment, and organizational development. He is an avid speaker as well. The chronological development of Gardner's thought process is obvious whe none looks at his books.

He progresses from Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too written in 1961, to Self Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society (1964), to No Easy Victories (1968). His latter works include On Leadership written in 1990. In all of his work, Gardner looks at the role of the individual and the collective role of the group. He dissects organizations and describes their maturation processes, compar in them to those of people. He stresses that without new growth, organizations like people, grow old and die from their inability to respond to the marketplace. In Self-Renewal Gardner stresses action over rote memorization and provides it as one of the maxims to ensure appropriate growth and health.

In On Leadership Gardner implicates explosive crisis situations (as opposed to creeping crises) as being the precipitating factor for the development of great leaders. Gardner's train of thought has evolved somewhat over the years to encompass pressing current difficulties but his solutions have remained essentially the same (Rasberry, 1992). In a recent speech for example he acknowledged the devastations of such complex societal problems such as AIDS but revealed the secret to their solution as being no more complex than societies willingness to take whatever steps are necessary to resolve the particular problem (Rasberry, 1992). He stated: "Every informed American understands the gravity of the problems we face today.

Yet the problems themselves are not as perplexing as the questions they raise concerning our capacity to gather our forces and act - a capacity commonly and much too vaguely described as political will. (Rasberry, 1992). Gardner is devoted to the thought process that as a group we have largely forgotten how to act in common. This is for the most part due to the fact that individual and special group interests have taken precedent over larger group interest (Rasberry, 1992).

Our shared values, on the other hand, have fallen bythe wayside in the wake of the values of a few select interest (Rasberry, 1992). Gardner defines shared values as those on which are built the edifice of group achievement (Rasberry, 1992). With the disintegration of these shared value swe as an overall group have no worth common purpose to which we can muster the energy and attention to devote ourselves to (Rasberry, 1992). Gardner expands on the concept of shared values by proposing the scenario that these values, in reality, no longer exist (Rasberry, 1992). This scenario would leave us with institutions that could no longer adapt to a changing world and with a sense of community that would be weakened by unresolved internal conflicts (Rasberry, 1992). Gardner suggests: "If we turn for a moment from the great substantive problems of the day to deeper questions having to do with our values, our sense of common purpose, our use and misuse of available talent and energy, we may be able to answer the question underlying all the other questions today: whether we have it in us to create a future worthy of our past (Rasberry, 1992).

His suggestion offers hope for the future. In this day when many of our public leaders are questioned not only on their leadership skills but on their morality the words of John W. Gardner offer true hope. Though his works weare able to ascertain that it is not any one leader or group of leaders who will bull the world through, it is instead a collaboration of the people. When the people decide to turn their collective group effort towards solutions, solutions will be found. Our leaders are merely puppets and we are the puppet masters.

Bibliography

Gardner, John W. Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too W.W. Norton Company: New York, 1984.
Gardner, John W. No Easy Victories. Harper and Row: New York, 1968.
Gardner, John W. On Leadership. The Free Press: New York, 1990.
Gardner, John W. Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.
Rasberry, William. Was Clinton Created By Our Times, Newsday, 10 Dec 1992.