People can be placed along the continuum, and the aspiring mind-changer needs to alter his approach accordingly if resonance is to be achieved. Argum… - Howard Gardner

"Children not only think better as they mature; they also become capable of thinking about their own mental processes. Memory capacity may not expand in any real sense, but children (and adults) learn how to boost their recall by various strategies, ranging from the ways in which they group or store things to the kinds of tally systems they utilize on paper or in their heads. Children also learn to think about their own problem-solving activities: How can I best handle a new challenge? Which system or which tool would be useful? Who can I turn to for help? What is relevant and what is irrelevant to a problem I am trying to solve or a principle I am seeking to discover or master? Often these lessons are learned by watching others reflect on their memories or their thinking processes, by mastering practices common in the culture, or by following oft-repeated adages; even left pretty much to their own devices, however, in seems reasonable to assume that nearly all youngsters will improve somewhat in the "metacognitive" areas between the age of seven and adulthood (which itself begins at markedly different ages across cultures)."

It cannot be overstated that the emphasis on visual thinking among German-speaking scientists and engineers circa 1900 was widespread. Yet in 1905 it was Einstein who combined visual thinking with Gedanken experiments and quasiaesthetic notions with dazzling results.

If we cannot today implement an education that yields full understanding, we can certainly do a much better job than we have done up to this point. The process of achieving such an education ought to be challenging and enriching, far more so than the implementation of the less ambitious education with which we have been saddled — even in places where students are required to work on their assignments until the wee hours of the morning. Important clues for the achievement of such an education come from venerable sources such as the traditional apprenticeship; equally important clues come from new sources of evidence, ranging from recently developed technologies like videodisks to newly evolving institutions such as children's museums.